Good for What Ails You - Part 1

This isn't a postcard, but a trade card from around 1880; it's called a metamorphic trade card.
We may make fun of the miracle cures and snake oils of yesteryear, but in fact we have many similar and equally questionable remedies today. And some remedies like this one were probably very effective. It's an ad for cod liver oil, Van Stan's Emulsion. Cod liver oil went out of fashion a long time ago, but we have rediscovered it. I take fish oil, so I'm hoping it will make me look younger just like it did these people. Besides that, it will cure scrofula, whatever that is.

All you have to do is flip back the top of the card and the miraculous cure has taken place:

The woman looks dramatically younger and healthier. I'm going to go out and buy a couple of bottles.
The other side of the same card has another equally good advertisement for a cement glue (Van Stan's Stratena):

Fold back the top and everything is fixed!

Shavertown and Pepacton, New York

This is a great old humor card, but the back side of the card is really of greater interest.  There's a reason I didn't recognize the towns of the sender and the recipient; they have been submerged under water for over 50 years.  Here's the other side of the card:

Tom Miner sent this letter from Shavertown, New York to his wife in nearby Pepacton in 1917. I'm not going to correct his spelling. Here's the message:

We are going to the show to night. We worked 10 hrs to day but to morrow we are not going to work like that

We are going to chainge I tell you

latter (?)

your hisban Tom

New York City needed water, so they purchased the valley on the Delaware River in 1942, displacing 974 people, destroying four towns, and submerging nearly half of the Delaware and Northern Railroad. What that actually meant is that the property owners were served with notices of condemnation.  The property owner had a choice to accept half the assessed value of the property and vacate the premises or hire an attorney. Residents who hired attorneys had their cases heard before three commissioners, one from Delaware County, one from New York City, and one from the 6th judicial district. The commissioners ultimately decided what the award should be.

A special panel of engineers hired by the Mayor of New York City to look at alternatives, recommended the Hudson as a water source instead of damming the Delaware. They also recommended universal metering and fixing leaks in New York City as conservation measures to reduce the demand. The Board of Water Supply objected to the report, and New York City rejected it in favor of the original Delaware River plan.
 
The West branch of the Delaware River was dammed, and flooding was completed in 1955, creating a reservoir twenty miles long and about a half mile wide. Along with the displaced living residents, graves from the local cemeteries had to be exhumed and moved. The reservoir currently provides new York City with about 25% of its drinking water.

Alice Jacobson, a former resident, has written a book entitled Beneath Pepacton Waters, which tells about life and people in the area before the dam.

Streetcar Sunday - What's the Difference?

I know this has been keeping you up at night. You toss and turn, wondering: "What is the difference between a streetcar, a trolley, a tram, a funicular, an interurban, and a cable car? Are they all the same?"  Not quite, but there is a fair amount of overlap. Here are some basic definitions:

Trolley

All sorts of things are called trolleys today, but a lot of them aren't really trolleys. The word trolley comes from troller, the wheel at the end of a pole that collects current from an overhead wire to power the vehicle. As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have the overhead wire, it's not a trolley.  Generally, trolleys also run on tracks, but there are exceptions.  There are also trolleybuses (or trolley coaches), though not very many anymore. Here's a postcard of a trolley in Brisbane Australia.

Streetcar

A streetcar is a wheeled vehicle that operates on rails. It may also be a trolley, but not always. Many definitions specify that it is powered by electricity, but that's not necessarily the case.  The first streetcars were pulled by horses, and there were also steam-powered streetcars. It is true though, that virtually all streetcars today operate on electricity.  Streetcar is the word used by Americans; people in the U.K. and many other places around the world refer to them as trams. Here are streetcars (or trams) crossing the August Bridge in Dresden, Germany in about 1910.

Tram

A tram is the same as a streetcar, except that a tram can also be suspended from a cable, in which case it is an aerial tram. In this case, Americans call it a tram too, because it is quite clearly not a streetcar. Things get a a little tricky here though because an aerial tram is really also a cable car, although it is permanently affixed to the cable. (Gondolas are also aerial cable cars, but are not permanently affixed.) Here is a great photo by Tim Jewett of the aerial tram in Portland, Oregon.

Cable Car

Cable cars are propelled by a continuously moving cable, which is often underground in a slot between the two rails. The cable is powered at a powerhouse, these days using electric power, but in earlier days with steam. The cable car attaches to the cable with a grip, which is just like a big pair of pliers. In order to stop the car, the gripman releases the grip. When he wants to start again, he clamps it down.

A number of cities in addition to San Francisco had cable cars in the early years of streetcars.  As far as I know, they were only used in cities with hills. In the days when streetcars were pulled by horses, the poor animals were often unable to pull a fully loaded streetcar up a hill. Cable cars overcame that problem, but when trolleys came along, they generally proved to be more efficient. Here's the cable car in San Francisco.

Funiculars or Incline Railways

So, what's the difference between a cable car and a funicular? Funiculars, like aerial trams, are generally attached to a cable, but they operate more like an elevator, with simultaneously ascending and descending cars counterbalancing one another. Also, funicular cars are often slanted to fit the grade. Cable cars are more likely to operate on streets, whereas funiculars have their own right of way. Here's a postcard of the Incline at lookout Mountain in Tennessee. The cars don't look like this anymore. This one looks a little like a bus; today's cars look like classic funicular cars.

Cog Railways

This is going a little off the subject, but I'll include it anyway. A cog railway usually has an engine and a passenger car. They are not linked together though; the engine merely pushes the car up the hill and brakes it on the way down. Unlike funiculars and cable cars, these cog railways produces the energy to ascend the incline, just like a train engine. The difference between a cog railway and a regular train is that the cog railway uses cogs to engage into a cog rack to provide it with traction for scaling steep slopes. A classic example is Jacob's Ladder in New Hampshire:

Here's a scary cog railway in Switzerland, but it runs on electricity:

Interurbans

Interurbans were sort of a blend between train and streetcar. As with streetcars, they traveled into towns on the main streets, but like trains, they also traveled on tracks through the countryside between cities. Interurbans were larger than streetcars and had greater horsepower, allowing them to exceed 60 miles per hour. Although they generally looked more like trains, they ran on electricity.

 Here's another one in Massachusetts.

So, these are the definitions as I understand them.  Let me know if you think I have missed something.