Streamliner Train Diner - Roadside America

Trains, Roadside America-style

The Boggs Bros Airway Diner US 101 San Diego CA on a linen postcard

 click image for larger view

Baseball postcard: Looking For A Home Run

circa early 1900s. click image for larger view.

What this little guy lacks in technique, he makes up for with heart. Play ball!

A pity they can't stay this age because I've heard that when they grow up they're real bears!

Little Miss Muffet and postcards

Artist signed Marsh Lambert, postally used 1917 (click image for full view)

Little Miss Muffet,
Sat on her tuffet...

But she got off her tuffet to mail a postcard!

Why don't you mail a postcard?

Mr Pineapple Head - Fantasy Postcard

Some of the expressions and humor on vintage postcards are lost to us today as usage & word definitions have changed over time.

While I get the obvious reference and visual association with pineapple in the card below, the meaning of the reference to "Indian" is less obvious until one does some digging around and finds the use of the pineapple by indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The past as they say is a foreign country.

circa 1910

Full Steam Ahead - The New Zealand Railways Gang At Oamaru circa 1905

Then there are rppc trains...

The New Zealand Railways Gang At Oamaru circa 1905. Produced as a Christmas Greeting postcard as was the custom at train stations at the time. 

(click on image for larger view) 

 

A Q Class locomotive of New Zealand Railways at Oamaru, South Island circa 1905. RPPC was sent as a Christmas greeting to family members from the gang at the Oamaru station. Sender remarks that the loco's lamp is one of the latest electric lamps from a workshop in Chicago.

Many decades later I rode the freight trains at Oamaru with my uncle who was a guard (conductor - yeah, I know no passengers so no tickets to punch; a guard "guarded" the train, not for "security" but "(rail)road" safety). By those times, diesels had taken over. Good times - toasting sandwiches on the pot belly stove in the caboose (guard's van). In the steam era, got to ride up front in the cab, shoveling some coal, blowing the whistle, hand on the throttle or whatever they call it, head out the window, cinders in the eye...

Sadly, kids can't do that anymore thanks to occupational safety and health. Go play a video game, kid. Wouldn't trade those memories for anything (sniff). God bless you Uncle Norman, up there in the big roundhouse in the sky.

Streamliner Trains - Part IV - The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad

Linen postcard examples of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, depicting the Champion and Florida Special trains of the 1940s and 50s. Click on images for larger views.

Streamliner Trains - Part III - Southern Pacific Railroad

For the enthusiasts of steam locomotives, a Southern Pacific streamliner on the Daylight Express run in California:

click on image for larger view. linen postcard, circa 1940s