One Intrepid Photographer!

This posting isn’t so much about the train on the front of the post card, as it

is about the photographer who took the picture. The following is taken from Wikipedia: Charles Roscoe Savage (August 16, 1832 – February 4, 1909) was a British-born landscape and portrait photographer most notable for his images of the American West. Savage converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in his youth while living in England. He served a mission in Switzerland and eventually moved to the United States. In America he became interested in photography and began taking portraits for hire in the East. He traveled to Salt Lake City with his family and opened up his Art Bazar where he sold many of his photographs. Savage concentrated his photographic efforts primarily on family portraits, landscapes, and documentary views. He is best known for his 1869 photographs of the linking of the First Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory, Utah. This is the picture that Charles Savage took. All American train fans are familiar with this famous shot:

The post card was published, not by Charles Savage, but by the

Frederick S. Lightfoot Collection of Huntington Station, New York. This post card is number 13 and it is part of a larger series of 50 post cards that the Lightfoot Collection published. You can see more of the collection at the website listed below here: http://www.wallywombatscollectables.com/Master-Photographer-by-Lightfoot.php The series was published prior to 1963 (the clue is that there is no zip code in the address on the back of the card). There are more than just trains in the collection.

The First Train to Have a Vacuum Cleaner

Wikipedia says: The Great Northern Railway (reporting mark GN) was an American Class I railroad. Running from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, it was the creation of 19th-century railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill and was developed from the Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad. The Great Northern's route was the northernmost transcontinental railroad route in the U.S. It is on this route that the picture on the front of this post card was

taken. The title says that the shot was taken near Scenic, Washington – a town about 75 miles east of Seattle. The train in the picture is the “Oriental Limited. This website: https://www.gnflyer.com/1924original.html tells us this about the Oriental Limited. The Great Northern Railway inaugurated transcontinental passenger service between Seattle and St Paul on June 18, 1893 and continued operations until April 1, 1971 when Amtrak assumed all passenger service. During the intervening 78 years, Great Northern provided first class passenger train service over its routes to the Northwest. During most of this period, there were two first class trains serving the route, although one was always regarded as the premier train. That premier train carried several different names through the years. Between 1893 and 1905 the railway's standard bearer carried the monikers of the Great Northern Flyer, the Oregonian, and the Great Northern Express. Between 1905 and 1929, the Great Northern Railway's crack transcontinental was called the Oriental Limited, named for the Asiatic commerce which had been one of J.J. Hill's motivating objectives in building the railroad itself. From 1929 until the end of passenger service operations, the premier train was known as the Empire Builder, in tribute to Mr. Hill. The new Oriental placed in service on May 23, 1909, carried an RPO/Bag, Day Coach, Tourist Sleeper, Diner, 12-1 and 16 section Standard Sleepers, and a Five Compartment Observation. 12-1 sleepers bore the names of Oriental ports such as Tokio (sic), Fujiyama, Yokohama, Manila and Foochuo. The Oriental's Observation Car had mahogany and cocoa finish like an English club and featured a large oval smoker separating the compartments from the lounge. This train was the first Oriental to be equipped with a vacuum cleaner.

The post card was published by The C.H. Shaver News Service out of Seattle, Washington. I could find no information about the company. I do know that there were many news distribution companies that ended their names with “News Service” or “News Company” who were partners with The American News Company (ANC). The ANC was the printer of this post card. They worked out of 119 Nassau Street, New York, NY between 1864 and 1969 and claimed to be the largest publisher and distributor of books, magazines, newspapers, and postcards in the United States exclusively through their national network of affiliated news agencies. Their earliest cards were printed as black and white views, followed by their lithographic Polychromes. Other series were added each being printed in a different manner. Some of these techniques have a specific letter prefix to their numbers, while others kept adding letter prefixes sequentially from A as they ran out of four or five digit numbers assigned to that card. Many cards with undivided backs were later reprinted with divided backs after 1907. Many small publishers also contracted out postcards though the American News Company. Their printers in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, Germany produced most of their cards, but many were manufactured in France and the United States as well. They produced cards by various processes using different trade names... This post card

used the Excelsior trade name. It was a gravure card printed in Germany. It was marketed as their highest quality black & white card, and most customers chose this type over the cheaper halftone version. Almost all cards in this series are printed in black & white, but there are some examples issued in monochromes of blue and sepia as well as more rare cards that were printed in color and hand colored. Prefixes A, B, D, F (1904-1920), Prefixes AA for Blue, Sepia & Hand colored cards (1908-1925). This information about the American News Company came from the Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York. http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersa1.html

I Feel the Earth Move Under my Feet

The information in the first paragraph was taken from this website: https://yubanet.com/scitech/toppled-train-offers-insight-into-1906-san-francisco-earthquake/ The train laying on its side in the picture on this post card was near the

Point Reyes station north of San Francisco, stopped on a siding for refueling, when it took its historic tumble. An eyewitness to the event said the conductor had just climbed back into the locomotive: “when the train gave a great lurch to the east, followed by another to the west, which threw the whole train on its side. The astonished conductor dropped off as it went over, and at the sight of the falling chimneys and breaking widows of the station, he understood that it was the Temblor.” The eyewitness account of the train lurching east then west before toppling suggests that the hypocenter of the 1906 is likely to be south of Point Reyes, perhaps offshore of San Francisco and San Juan Bautista, as others have calculated.

The post card was published by The Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History, which is named after its founder, a U.C. Berkeley graduate in history who enjoyed a long career at the Oakland Tribune. In the mid-1960s, Jack Mason, along with his wife Jean, retired to his lifelong summer community of Inverness in West Marin County and began to document the history of the area, eventually writing eight books and publishing a delightful quarterly journal, Point Reyes Historian. The Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History is primarily an archive with some museum collections created to build upon local historian Jack Mason's extensive history collection. The Museum collects and preserves materials pertaining to the history of the Point Reyes Peninsula and Tomales Bay regions. Our mission is to enrich the community through exhibits, publications, outreach programs, and research opportunities. We seek to inspire public interest in West Marin history and to highlight its connection to contemporary life. This information was taken from: https://jackmasonmuseum.org/about/

The Post Card is a Impressive as the Train it Promotes

The train depicted on the front of this post card is the 20th Century Limited Express. The 20th Century Limited was an express passenger train on the New York Central Railroad (NYC) from 1902 to 1967.

The train traveled between Grand Central Terminal in New York City and LaSalle Street Station in Chicago, Illinois, along the railroad's "Water Level Route". NYC inaugurated the 20th Century Limited as competition to the Pennsylvania Railroad, aimed at upper-class and business travellers. It made few station stops along the way and used track pans to take water at speed. In 1938, streamlined train sets designed by Henry Dreyfuss were added to the route. The 20th Century Limited was the flagship train of the New York Central and was advertised as "The Most Famous Train in the World". It was described in The New York Times as having been "[...] known to railroad buffs for 65 years as the world's greatest train", and its style was described as "spectacularly understated". The phrase "red-carpet treatment" is derived from passengers' walking to the train on a specially designed crimson carpet. The amazing part of this post card is that it is as fancy as the train that it is showing off! First, the picture of the train itself is embossed on the card. When I run my fingers over the card I can feel the 3-D effect of the embossing. The dark spots (on the front tracks, on the front and sides of the train, and in the smoke) are actually little pieces of glitter that has been glued onto the card. The title of the card and publisher are also embossed into the card. This card is over 107 years old and the glitter is still there as strongly pronounced as ever!!

I do not usually publish a very large picture of the back of the post card, but I am making an exception this time. Look at the picture of the train; that is the result of the embossing process. This post card is from the pre-March 1, 1907 era. One is only allowed to write the address on the back of the post card. The information about the publisher of this post card comes from: Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersi.html This major publisher produced a wide variety of color halftone lithographic cards in series that were printed by Emil Pinkau in Leipzig, Saxony. Each city or location of their color card sets were assigned the same number prefix. They also published an unnumbered series of chromolithographic fine art cards that were printed in Dresden. Many of their early cards do not have their name on them, only their distinct eagle logo. Their best known cards are from a very large set that captured scenes throughout the City of New York. These cards tended to use brighter than average colors and were titled in a very distinct font. Similar cards, but with more subdued writing, appeared afterwards depicting scenes from the surrounding regions such as Long Island. Illustrated Post Card Company of 118 Chambers Street in New York was printing millions of cards at a time when picture postcards were at the peak of their popularity. Another address given for them is 520 West 84th Street, New York and they operated from 1905 to 1914. They published a wide variety of color halftone lithographic cards in series that were printed by Emil Pinkau in Leipzig, Saxony. Each city or location of their color card sets were assigned the same number prefix.Their best known cards are from a very large set that captured scenes throughout the City of New York. These cards tended to use brighter than average colors and were titled in a very distinct font. Similar cards, but with more subdued writing, appeared afterwards depicting scenes from the surrounding regions such as Long Island. In 1909 they stopped importing cards from Germany and began printing their own. A large number of black & white cards were produced in a more open halftone with some being poorly hand colored. These black & white cards were numbered consecutively.

History Passed on from One Person to the Next

The train in the picture on the front of this post card belongs to the Western

Pacific Railroad. The picture was taken in the Feather River Canyon in northern California. Wikipedia provides us the following information: The Feather River Route is a rail line that was built and operated by the Western Pacific Railroad. It was constructed between 1906 and 1909, and connects the cities of Oakland, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The line was built to compete with the Central Pacific Railroad (and later Southern Pacific Railroad), which at the time held a nearly complete monopoly on Northern California rail service. The route derives its name from its crossing of the Sierra Nevada, where it follows both the North and Middle Forks of the Feather River. The route is famous for its impressive engineering qualities and its considerable scenic value. All of the route is now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The post card is from the J. H. Eastman collection. This website provides pertinent information about the photographer and publisher: https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/archives-and-special-collections/manuscript/eastmans-originals-collection/ Jervie Henry Eastman was born, July 20, 1880, in White Cloud, Michigan.

His family moved to northern California in 1886. In 1898, Eastman launched his photographic career in Sisson, California (later named Mount Shasta), as a view photographer. He became a partner in the Shasta View Company in 1907. Eastman lost his entire stock of plates and cards in a fire in 1912. In 1921, Eastman moved to Susanville and established Eastman & Company as a commercial photography and post card studio. In 1936 he hired Mirl Simmons, a young photographer from Hillsborough, West Virginia, to help with the postcard photography. In 1947, Eastman and Simmons became partners. The business had expanded to provide photographic supplies to southeastern Oregon and studios in Westwood, Weed, and Susanville. Eastman retired from photography in 1959 and sold his share of the business to Simmons. He died in Susanville on February 11, 1969. Simmons ran the Eastman Studios until 1980, when he retired and sold the business to John and Shirley Castle. Mirl Simmons died on April 27, 1987, in Jamestown, California. The Eastman's Originals Collection (the historical postcards and negatives) was sold to Anne Fisher in 1982. She managed the collection until her retirement in 1994. She donated the collection to the University of California, Davis, in 1994.

Oh, to be able to "fly" again!!

The locomotive on the front of this post card is the Denver and Rio Grande

Western No. 169. The information about it here is taken from our good friends at Wikipedia. No. 169 is a 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" type narrow gauge steam railway locomotive and one of twelve similar locomotives built for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1883. It was built as a passenger locomotive, with 46 in (1,200 mm) drivers, the second largest drivers used on any three foot gauge D&RGW locomotive. (The K-37s which were originally standard gauge have 44 in (1,100 mm) drivers.) During its operational life it was used on all of the major D&RGW narrow gauge lines. It appears in two Otto Perry photographs on the branch to Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 1933. It was taken out of service in 1938 and then refurbished in 1939 to appear at the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1941, the railroad donated it to the City of Alamosa and it has been in Cole Park there since. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Locomotive No.169 in 2001.

Judging by the back of the post card, the city of Alamosa is trying to raise enough money to get No. 169 ready to “fly” again. There is no printer or publisher listed on the back of the post card, so I think that the city itself has taken on the responsibility to print this card and sell it to help raise the funds necessary. I wish them the best of luck!!

Watch Out for Tornados

The picture is of a steam engine operated by the Knox & Kane Railroad

crossing the Kinzua Bridge near Mt. Jewell Pennsylvania. The bridge spans the Kinzua Creek Valley, thus its name. The Kinzua Viaduct, when first constructed in May 1882, was the highest and longest viaduct in the world, measuring 301 feet high and 2,053 feet long. The need to transport coal, oil and lumber across the Kinzua Gorge inspired General Thomas Kane, president of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Coal Company and Octave Chanute, Chief Engineer for the Erie Railroad to design a colossal viaduct. It was built by the Elmira Bridge Co. of Elmira, New York. The longest span is only 60 feet, but the entire bridge is 2,053 feet long In 1900, the viaduct was rebuilt of steel to accommodate larger loads and the weight of "modern" train traffic. The style of bridge is a Deck Plate Girder Bridge, which passes the train over Kinzua Creek [today on the former Erie Railway at Kinzua Bridge State Park] in McKean County, Pennsylvania. You can driver there today and walk on the partially re-constructed bridge that was mostly destroyed by a tornado on July 21, 2003. The spans that were left were rehabilitated and reopened in 2011 as the "Kinzua Sky Walk. If you choose to drive there these GPS coordinates can help you to arrive: Approximate latitude, longitude +41.76345, -78.58928 (decimal degrees) 41°45'48" N, 78°35'21" W (degrees)

The post card was printed before the tornado took down the bridge. This is a modern era post card printed by the Modern-Ad Company. It contains a bar-code and a space below for the U. S. Postal Service to print their mark on the bottom. The photo on the front of the post card was taken by Bron Miller.