I've just completed another custom card in the 1955 Topps Rails and Sails format. It depicts the 1930s Chicago-St. Louis inter-city passenger train "Abraham Lincoln."
Production of this distinctively different outfit was subsidized by the U.S. Public Works Administration during the Depression.
The back of my card is really just a 1950s snapshot of the train's origins. Tracing its history all over the internet is a convoluted route. The "Abe" was reconfigured a number of times between 1935 and the 1960s, especially after the Alton Railroad was sold to the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio in 1947.
Still, I enjoy losing myself for an afternoon researching the great old streamliners of my youth.
There will be more along these lines as the winter wears on.
