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Vintage RPPC - Steam Derrick and Industrial Locomotive
Real photo view of an industrial railroad operation working a cut. At the left, a rail-mounted steam derrick sits on its turntable base: a boarded engine house with a curved roof and smokestack, an A-frame mast, a lattice boom carrying chain falls over a heavy sheave, and a large gear drum at the operator's position. The operator sits at the controls in cap and work clothes while two more men in overalls stand on the deck beside the house, and a bucket hangs on its chain over the excavated bank at the right. A string of low wooden side-dump cars stands on the track in the foreground, several of them loaded. At the right, a small industrial tank locomotive faces the camera under steam, with a trainman standing on the running board beside the cab and the engineer leaning out of the cab window. Behind the work, a second track runs along the far side of the cut past a low wooden car body, with worked-over ground and stripped hillside beyond.
Unused and unposted - the back is blank apart from a later collector's pencil notation reading "Star Junction, PA Fayette County." The back is a divided back reading POST CARD, CORRESPONDENCE HERE and ADDRESS ONLY, a format permitted in the United States from March 1, 1907. This paper carries no printed stamp box.
Condition: the card is stained, with overall toning and brown discoloration across the back and staining carrying into the front margins.
A strong piece for collectors of industrial and mining railroad postcards, steam shovel and construction machinery subjects, or early real photo views of working men and their equipment.
