Welcome to Vintage Railroad Postcards!

Thank you for stopping by! This is the blog for the Russell P. Panecki Collection of vintage railroad-related postcards. The entire collection consists of nearly one thousand so far with images dating from circa 1904 to the 1950s. To leave a comment, ask a question, to contribute or correct historical information, a comment box is located to the left for your convenience.

Each page, including this homepage, has an index located in the lower portion of the page. In addition to the index, posts were updated with historical information, new postcards added from storage files, while some posts were completely rewritten or edited for corrections. Three articles have been added and are worth reading. They include how vintage postcards were made, the history of Pennsylvania Station, and the history of Grand Central Terminal.

My apologies, but the postcards in my collection and on this blog are not available for sale, copying, or for contribution to projects. Please keep in mind that I reserve all rights to the images and content of this blog.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Chop Shops

Everyone's familiar with railroad roundhouses and turntables, but the real work took place in the back shops. This is where locomotives and cars were brought for routine maintenance repairs or to be completely overhauled. Here's a 1910 view of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas shops at Parsons, Kansas. Electric overhead cranes made light work of moving locomotives.


This is a another circa 1910 card showing the enormous Grand Trunk facility at Battle Creek, Michigan.


This is an interior view of the same shop with some of the machinery needed to help true up wheels, machine new parts, etc.


This Northern Pacific shop in Livingston, Montana looks like it can handle anything that comes its way.


Lastly, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific's shops at Silvis and  East Moline  IL ,were new when these cards were first published circa 1910. and 1908 Many railroads had the capability to build their own locomotives from both fabricated and supplied parts. Note the electric overhead crane with the suspended locomotive boiler and cab in the second card.