This Southern Railway Company pass, 4 x 2.5″, was issued to Miss Josephine Morris, dependent daughter of W.H. Morris, Agent, Harriman, Tenn, in 1921.
The back looks like a pass that didn’t print well. There’s a clover pattern overall and “NTOW”, part of some word or other. I hope she enjoyed her visits to and from Knoxville.
I didn’t have any luck tracking down the name of the vice-president who signed this.
I think this card is from the early 20s. I don’t know what company actually printed it (“published by Erwin Drug” just means that the drug store commissioned the postcard run). American News Company of Boston farmed out a lot of the black-and-white work to Curt Teich in Chicago. The inventory number does seem to indicate ANC. However, I’m still working on this. I have several cards in my collection that have the same back design and one seems to indicate it was done by Asheville Post Card Company.
Another maybe: this design often is shown with “COMMERCIALCHROME” AND “OCTOCHROME” in place of the “BLACK AND WHITE” wording. It gets complicated.
Whatever. This bridge is a 1907 replacement for an earlier timber structure and is, according to Goforth, is a TPG, a through plate girder style built on stone piers (possible: Goforth had access to original construction data and may have been using the TPG abbreviation to mean “timber plate girder”). It’s 864′ long. This view is looking back toward Erwin. Note the steps up to the railroad grade.
This is the same bridge in 2014 (36 05 56.8N, 82 26 34.9W – Google Earth coordinate data entry):
The bridge is now a through pony plate girder and the piers are still there, but have been added on to in order to raise the level of the track. There are houses on the left of this,at Unaka Springs, but no stairs.
Well, it was the Southern Railway Freight Office on Meadow Road in Asheville. Habitat for Humanity occupies the back portion (cropped out in this picture) for storage, I guess, since their retail store is just across the parking lot from this building. This portion appears to be unoccupied.
I especially like the SR medallions in the upper corners. Southern was a deal back then.
Blogging the Railroad Tunnels 