$45.00 CAD
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Nice RPPC photo of CNR steam locomotive going down track out in the countryside. Photo taken by famed railway photographer H.W. Fontin.
Written on back: “Canadian National Ry. 4.8.4. ---(?) loco # 6100 (1927)”
In Canada, the CNR named these locomotives "Confederations", then soon after “Northern”. The locomotive #6100 was Canada’s first Northern type locomotive, built by C.L.C. in 1927. It was picked to participate in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s “Fair of the Iron Horse”. Its service life ended in 1961 when it was scrapped.
Photographer stamp on back: ‘Photo by H.W. Pontin’
Studio name on back ‘Railroad Photographers 47 Royal Street Allston Mass.’
Based on AZO photographic paper used, dates photo from 1924-1949.
Card was folded horizontally causing a crack. Pencil mark on back, smudge.
(Red text is an electronic watermark that is not physically part of the photo for sale)
Once upon a time, the Rail Photo Service was a huge force in railroad publishing. Not a company or a business in the usual sense, it was a sort of co-op of railroad photographers, strung out all across the country and apparently pledging their work to the organization. The man in charge was H. W. Pontin. He made quite a name for himself over several decades.
Pontin is in the great tradition of professional railroaders who loved their job so much they decided to take a camera along. Born in England in 1893, he moved to the U.S. as a child and years later hired on with New York Central’s Boston & Albany subsidiary. He was 20. There he would stay for 45 years, until retirement in 1958, most of those years spent on the right-hand side of the cab, running steam through Massachusetts.
It didn’t take long for Pontin to gain a reputation as an unusually talented photographer
http://cs.trains.com/ctr/b/mileposts/archive/2018/09/11/the-blue-stamp-meant-great-train-pictures.aspx
The 4-8-4 was the ultimate wheel configuration for the modern passenger and fast freight steam locomotive. The eight driver arrangement was usable on almost every main line in North America and with drivers up to 80 inches in diameter allowed any reasonable speed that the railroad could handle. The four wheel trailing truck supported a larger firebox for maximum steam levels allowing for extra boiler capacity.
With the surge in passenger business in the 1920's most railroads were being forced to operate extra trains or run their scheduled trains in sections simply because the locomotives in use could only haul about 12 cars. It was out of this need that the "super powered" locomotives were developed and of them the 4-8-4 was the most numerous and widely used.
