Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway

Postcard US-3429537 to France shows a northbound San Diegan train, in the form of two Budd-built Rail Diesel Cars (RDC's), pulls out of Santa Ana, California. The photo was taken by Thomas H. Gildersleeve on July 3, 1952. Those cars were brand new and were placed in service on May 21, 1952.

According to Thomas H. Gildersleeve, "the first San Diegan was inaugurated as a diesel powered streamlined train on March 27, 1938, and it soon evolved into an entire fleet of Los Angeles - San Diego trains encompassing three sets of equipment, each of which made two daily round trips. After the RDC was introduced, Santa Fee purchased this one pair to replace one of the conventional streamliner sets in San Diegan service."

"The RDC San Diegans lasted until January of 1956, at which time they were reassigned to train No's 311 and 312 between Newton and Dodge City, Kansas, as it was felt they lacked sufficient seating capacity for continued service on the popular San Diego line. In their new assignment, the cars displayed a more conventional Santa Fe paint scheme with the usual red and yellow front end, and one of the cars sported a baggage section, making it similar in appearance to an RDC-2. The cars climaxed their career on the Santa Fe by operating out of Carlsbad, New Mexico."

The card features two of the five 1999 33-cent USPS commemorative stamps titled "All Aboard!" The original water color illustrations used on the stamps depict art deco-style passenger trains of the 1930s and 1940s. On the far left was the Super Chief, famous for carrying motion picture people between Chicago and Los Angeles, also known as the "Train of the Stars." On the second left was the Congressional which followed a route between New York and Washington, D.C. Its slogan was "Every Mile Electrified."

The stamp on the far right shows one of the five 2015 Forever USPS commemorative stamps with Mexican artist Martín Ramírez's drawings from circa 1960–1963, a gouache, colored pencil, and graphite drawing on pieced paper “Untitled (Trains on Inclined Tracks).”

Wabash F7A #1189 Locomotive

Postcard US-3064218 from Illinois shows Wabash F7A #1189 locomotive, which was the last F unit built for the Wabash Railroad by General Motors Diesel (GMD) at London, Ontario, Canada in April 1953. As the last operating F7 on the Norfolk and Western, it was retired on September 18, 1979 and donated to the Monticello Railway Museum in 1982. One weekend a year, Wabash #1189 and CN #6789 get to run on the mainline track.

鉄道の日

"鉄道の日" is the annual Railway Festival in Japan on October 14 to commemorate the opening of Japan's first railway between Shimbashi Station (新橋駅), Tokyo and Sakuragichō Station (桜木町駅), Yokohama on October 14, 1872. In 2014, the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) issued a three-day unlimited-ride pass to celebrate the occasion.

Postcard JP-591605 from Japan shows the Super Sōya, express train service between Sapporo and Wakkanai in Hokkaido, operated by Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido) which is one of the six regional operators in the JR Group for the passenger services.

Fremont Street, Las Vegas in 1930

May is National Historic Preservation Month. Postcard US-2545672 to Russia shows a historic photo of Fremont Street looking west around 1930. The train depot is at the end of the street. There was an Elks lodge, an ice cream and sweets store, a Western Union, and a hardware store. Doctors, dentists, and lawyers had their offices on the second floor of many of the buildings.

The Union Plaza Hotel was built at the location of the train depot in the early seventies. It continued to have the Union Pacific Railway Station attached until Amtrak discontinued passenger train services into Las Vegas in the late nineties. The area where the train station was has since been converted into additional casino space as part of the Plaza Hotel and Casino.

Le Mastrou

Postcard FR-368709 from France shows "Le Mastrou", or Train de l'Ardèche. It is a tourist railway in the Ardèche region of the South of France. The network of railways in the area originally opened on July 12 1891, and closed on October 31, 1968. A portion of lines was reopened as a heritage railway in the following year. In 2008, the heritage services were suspended due to lack of funds for repair and maintenance. The services were resumed in 2013.

Colorful Train on Neiwan Line

Postcard TW-1123145 from Taiwan shows a colorful train running on the Neiwan Line (內灣線), a railway branch railway line in Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The line was constructed in 1950 and was fully open on September 11, 1951, with a length of 27.9 km and 14 stations from Hsinchu to Neiwan. It became a popular tourist attraction in the early 2000s.

Alishan Forest Railway, Taiwan

Postcard TW-1051157 from Taiwan shows the Alishan Forest Railway (阿里山森林鐵路), a network of narrow-gauge (762 mm or 2.5 ft wide) railways originally constructed for logging in the Alisha mountain area in Chiayi County, Taiwan. Now it is a popular tourist attraction with unique Z-shaped switchbacks, many tunnels and wooden bridges.

First Bridge of the Yangtze, Wuhan, China

Postcard US-2293208 to Belarus shows the Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge ( 武汉长江大桥) in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China with a photo taken on October 1, 2007. The double-deck road and rail bridge was the first bridge across the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. It opened to public traffic fifty six years ago on October 15, 1957.

The Wuhan metropolis is an amalgamation of three cities located at the confluence of the Yangtze River and one of its branches: the Han River: Wuchang is located on the southern bank of the Yangtze; Hanyang is on the northern bank of the Yangtze and the west bank of the Han; and Hankou sits on the northern bank of the Yangtze and the eastern bank of the Han. Wuhan lies in the heart of Central China and has been a transportation hub between Beijing, the political and culture center in the north and the trading ports of Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the south. The Beijing-Wuhan railway line went into full service in 1906, followed in 1936 by the Wuhan-Guangzhou railway line. Before the bridge was built, train cars travelling between northern and southern China had to be ferried on barges over the Yangtze River, a laborious and time-consuming practice. Plans for the bridge's construction were first made in 1910; and four exploratory surveys were made between 1913 and 1948 for site selection. However, the construction did not start until 1955 due to economic constrains and the combination of World War II and the Chinese Civil War. The construction lasted for two years and was assisted by a 28-person delegation of engineers from the then Soviet Union.

The bridge extends 1.6 kilometers or 1 mile from Turtle Hill in Hanyang, on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, to Snake Hill in Wuchang, on the southern bank of the Yangtze River. The upper level of the bridge has four lanes for two-way automobile traffic while the lower level is a double-track railway on the Beijing-Guangzhou railway line.

Since then, there have been 60 bridges and 3 tunnels built by September 2013 over the 2,884 km or1,792 m main stretch of the Yangtze River, representing a broad array of bridge designs and significant achievements in modern bridge design and engineering.

Florida Overseas Railroad

On January 22, 1912, the first train from mainland Florida reached Key West through the Florida Overseas Railroad, an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway, in operation from 1912 to 1935.

Until today 101 years ago, Key West is an isolated outpost reachable only by boat. Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler conceived the railroad that stretched more than 160 kilometers or 100 miles into open ocean, and the construction began in 1905. Similar to William Andrews Clark, who built the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad that went through Las Vegas in 1905, Henry Flagler was a visionary who made remote destinations accessible to both passengers and freight.

You can read the Last Train to Key West to learn how the train services ended in September 1935.

Update: The Postcard showing a train traveling along the Florida Overseas Railroad was later sent to Brasil as US-2501260.

New Orleans Streetcar

Postcard US-1720411 shows a red streetcar on the Canal Street Line near downtown New Orleans, LA on September 6, 2010. There are currently three additional operating streetcar lines in New Orleans: The St. Charles Avenue Line, the Riverfront Line, and the Loyola Avenue Line. The St. Charles Avenue Line is the longest of the four and the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world since the first half of the 19th century in 1830s, only interrupted by Hurricane Katrina between August 2005 and December 2006.