Greetings family friends, and train buddies! I thought that you may enjoy a little postcard history and a silly railroad image that's more than 100 years old.....Bill

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RAILROAD POSTCARDS OF THE PAST

A CALIFORNIA WATERMELON

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A single giant watermelon or a load of two huge cabbages covering the deck of an open Southern Pacific flat car?? A gigantic lemon filling an entire S.P.wooden hopper? These are just a few of a series of postcards published by Edward H. Mitchell featuring fantastic exaggerated California produce prepared for shipment aboard S.P. rolling stock. Businessman and California advocate, Mitchell purchased a small San Francisco publishing and printing business in1898 and became one of the most prolific postcard publishers in the country. By the early1920’s he had produced thousands of scenes and printed millions of copies of his own cards as well as for other postcard publishers. Mitchell relied on the work from many early California photographers for scenes of Yosemite, Monterey, Lake Tahoe and other classic western locations. Railroads were a popular and profitable subject of Mitchell who published dozens of scenes for Southern Pacific including it’s scenic Shasta Route. His own fanciful 1910 novelty collection promoting California’s agricultural industry with  pre-Photoshop composite photographs featuring oversize fruit and vegetables was quite popular. Mitchell retired from the postcard business in 1923, sold his inventory of three and a half million cards for the bargain price of $500, and became a real estate developer. Happily, after more than a century, thousands of Edward H. Mitchell postcards still be found on-line, in antique shop, and in private collections.   

From the postcard collection of Bill Ralph