Nostalgia & History > Anyone know the location?

I found a terrific picture of a railroad depot, a train and people. The engine of the train used wood so the picture must have been taken in 1900 or before. I copied the picture but did not label it. I thought I added the website to my Favorites. Now I can’t find the website.

Picture 1 is the picture above.

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While searching for the picture above and its website I found the following interesting pictures.

Picture 2 is from the following website,

https://www.augustana.edu/academics/geography/department/GrandExcursion2/geochronology.htm

The following excerpts are from the section, “Geochronology of the 1854 Grand Excursion,” on the above website.

“On the morning of June 5, [1854] over six hundred people boarded two gaily-decorated trains in Chicago. The Grand Excursion had begun. The trains were to make the 181-mile trip to Rock Island in about eight hours. The first one hundred miles took them through several well-established towns on the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) Canal, which the railroad paralleled to LaSalle, including Joliet, Morris, and Ottawa.”

On the website you can click to see a map of the route.

“While approaching Moline, where the tracks emerged onto the floodplain of the Mississippi, most excursionists got their first glimpse of the mighty Mississippi.”

“Late in the afternoon of Monday June 5, at the town of Rock Island, excursionists were met by five steamboats to take them upriver to Minnesota Territory: the Galena, the Golden Era, the Lady Franklin, the G. W. Sparhawk, and the War Eagle.”

On the website there is a nice map of the trip upriver to the Minnesota Territory.

“The boats arrived back in Rock Island and Davenport on Saturday morning, June 10, the fastest having traveled some five hundred miles in about thirty hours. Later that day, most excursionists boarded Rock Island trains to return to Chicago, although upwards of two hundred of them continued south to St. Louis on the War Eagle and the Sparhawk. The Grand Excursion had introduced the West to the East via the excursionists themselves and through the extensive coverage of the celebration in Eastern newspapers. It was a grand celebration, befitting the completion of the first railroad line to reach the Mississippi River from the East.”

The following website has newspaper accounts of the Grand Excursion.

http://www.illinoisancestors.org/rockisland/grandexcursiontwo.htm

Picture 2, Rock Island Railroad, Grand Excursion.

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Picture 3 is an enlargement of the portion of picture 2 with the engineer and fireman. The enlargement was made software that I have recently purchased that is designed to enlarge with a minimum of distortion.

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Picture 4 is from the following website,

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-bl005736/bl005736

Picture 4, “Title: 1st pass train at Crystal City July 4th 1889. The Frankfort & SouthEastern RR (Crystal City-now Beulah) at foot of North Hill. Collection Title: Hubbell family papers, 1859-1983. Collection Creator: Hubbell family. Scan Source: 5 x 8 b&w mounted photographic print.”

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The above website has Zoom.

Picture 5 is picture 4 enlarged with the first setting on the Zoom on the above website.

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In Picture 6 I attempted to enlarge the same area as in picture 5 with my recently purchased software so I could compare the Zoom of the above website with my software.

Picture 6 is picture 4 enlarged with my software.

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Thanx for the splendid vignettes of a bygone era.
...Lorenzo

Flynn,
Depot looks like a Santa Fe with the 4 windows on the end. upkpfan

upkpfan Wrote:

> Depot looks like a Santa Fe with the 4 windows on
> the end.

Pretty sure it's not Santa Fe. Four end windows were common on Santa Fe depots, but four windows plus a door on the ground level plus some raised windows for a "half story" was definitely not typical Santa Fe practice, even in the early years. Santa Fe had a handful of wood burning 4-4-0's, but with easy access to coal, the road didn't use wood as a fuel for very long. I've never seen a photo showing a Santa Fe 4-4-0 with a huge, mesh-topped balloon stack and a tender piled high with wood.