C&NW 40th St. Yard, Chicago, 1942

Another one from the Library of Congress set of color transparencies. As always, click for a larger version.

Source data, from their Flickr stream (lots more images of different kinds, at the Library of Congress website!):

"Locomotives lined up for coal, sand and water at the coaling station in the 40th Street yard of the C & NW RR., Chicago, Ill. Jack Delano, photographer. December, 1942."

Boston Public Library and Boylston Street Car 1896

From an article in the January, 1896 issue of SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE:




Click to see full-size version of the picture. Click here to see the full article, "The New building of the Boston Public Library."

Train in Desolation, Tennessee, 1939

"A train bringing copper ore out of the mines, Ducktown, Tenn. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land (LOC)"

Wolcott, Marion Post,, 1910-1990, photographer. September 1939"


From the LoC Flickr set of color photos, "1930s-40s in color".

Click to see larger version. I have photoshopped this shot for level adjustment to display better on computer monitors.

Australia, National Railway Museum, Port Adelaide

Last year I spent three weeks in Australia, and as part of the trip visited the National Railway Museum in Port Adelaide. Great museum! Here's a standard 3/4 shot of a classic locomotive:

And another one, taken outside, just for fun:

Click to make large. See all of these on my photo website.

Carriage in the Woods

Hard to believe that this historic railway coach, used by the Prince of Lippe to come to Herford, appears to be slowly moldering away in a field of weeds, as published in 1990 in the book Herford Neu Entdeckt [Herford Discovered Anew] (Freie und Hansestadt Herford).

Click always for Bigger. The Wik' has short entries on Herford and Lippe.

Perhaps the coach is in a railway museum at this point.

Trolley Line in Seoul, Korea 1898-1900

Photographs from one of Burton Holmes's volumes, his trip to Korea in 1898-1900 — there is some debate as to which trip and what year these photos were taken.

The line had only recently been opened in Seoul when Holmes visited with still cameras and a Gaumont motion picture camera, and took the first known movies in Korea. Some of this film has survived and has been restored with funding by a Korean institution. I believe there is footage of a trolley shot (a dolly shot, shot from the front of a moving trolley), among the first of this kind.

Click for big.

The New Boston Subway for Trolley Cars (1897)

Enough paper! OK, a paper presentation of trolley cars. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for September 18, 1897, with a cover feature on Boston:

Click image for a larger, fully readable version.

I've been there! Not at that time; I'm not nearly that old, though after an afternoon spent digging up a lawn I'm pretty close to feeling that old. From the MagazineArt.org section of covers from SCIAM, this is the one.

A thousand more SCIAM covers for your delectation. Enjoy!

More Railroad Printing and Advertisement

The railroads printed quantities of travel posters evoking the romance of somewhere far away, a place you could get to if only you bought a ticket. Here's a circa 1923 poster by Frank Hazell, published by the New York Central and illustrating West Point and the U. S. Military Academy there. This was offered recently for sale on eBay.

Here West Point has been magically transformed to a fantasy castle out of the Arabian Nights. As always, click image for a larger version.

Land Promotions by Railroad Companies

Railroad companies tried to sell potential settlers on the benefits of relocating in their service area, knowing that they would buy things from far away, and ship things out (like their crops), benefiting the railroad in both directions. Here's the cover from a brochure published by the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroad touting land in Oregon and Washington (courtesy of eBay selller jjjunk).

A Very Different Pair of Railroad Pictures

Two photos from Boulder Junction, Colorado, probably early 20th century, from an eBay listing by eBay seller luvoldpaper

Looks a lot different today, I think.

Two Swiss Mountain Railway Pictures

From a guidebook to Lucerne, Switzerland, published in the 1930's, and currently listed on eBay by seller acmeproducts.

The Pilatus Railway. Cogs! The only way they could go up at that angle.

The Rigi Railway (compare with this earlier post)

Click images to see larger versions.

First Electric Locomotive in U. S. 1888

From the August, 1920 issue of SCIENCE AND INVENTION:

Click pic for bigger version. Here's a link to an even bigger version of the picture of the locomotive.

When this was published, the locomotive was only thirty-two years old; that's like reading an article today about the history of something built in 1979. In 1920, the locomotive itself was in the barns of the Connecticut Company, the primary electric line in the state of Connecticut. I wonder if it's preserved at the Shore Line Trolley Museum? Might be this: "Ansonia Derby & Birmingham 'Derby,' the oldest surviving electric locomotive and the only Van De Poele motor preserved."

Special thanks to magazine collector Steve Davis for spotting this article, and scanning it for this blog.