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St Louis Car Company Album A Photographic Record by Andrew D Young w/ DJ
St Louis Car Company Album A Photographic Record by Andrew D Young
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket (Has damage on back)
160 pages
Copyright 1984
CONTENTS
St Louis Car Company St Louis Job 783
Denver & Interurban M-152 Job 783
Sioux Falls Traction System 4 Job 792
New York Central Lines US Mail car Job 640
1908 trailer car Seattle Electric Job 795
Yonkers 8 Job 800
Bartlesville Interurban Railway 4 Job 815
Beaumont traction Co 120 Job 821
Interior of Beaumont Car
#73 Job 828
Arkansas Valley Interurban Job 832
Single car for Murphysboro Ill Job 830
Augusta-Aiken Railway & Electric Company of Georgia Job 829
Chicago & Milwaukee Electric Railroad Job 838
Ogden Rapid Transit Co Job 861
TMER&L Co 503 Job 847
Utah Light & Railway Co 602 Job 867
Milwaukee car Job 847
The Ogden Rapid Transit Co Job 862
Key Route Job 883
JT Co 139 Job 888
St Louis Car Co 405 Job 897
St Louis Car Co Job 903
Manhattan City & Interurban Job 927
Illinois traction System Job 919
3 Chicago Style cars Job 917
St Louis Car Co Job 942
Washington Railway & Electric Company Job 943
St LOUIS CAR CO Specialties Bulletin No 100 Interlude #1
Light Weight Non-Reversible Seat
Specially Upholstered Non-reversible Seats
Combination Passenger and Motormans Seat
Saskatoon Municipal Railway 11 Job 947
Sioux Falls Traction System 12 Job 949
H&M St Ry Co 5 Job 952
New York Railways Co 5001 Job 957
EPE Ry Co Job 961
Illinois traction #210 Job 966
Oregon Electric Railway Co Job 972
Iowas Peoples Gas & Electric Co Job 948
Union Traction of Kansas Job 1062
Single truck car Job 969
Michigan United Traction Co Job 1005
Michigan Railway Co 815 Job 1023
Southwestern Gas & Electric Co 56 Job 1055
Pittsburgh Railways 4350 Job 1078
St Louis #118 Job 1079
Jamestown Westfield & Northwestern 309 Job 1085
Northern Ohio Traction & Light Co Job 1086
Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Job 1103
Oklahoma Railway Co Hob 1106
Anaconda Street Railway 16 Job 1115
Ft Wayne-Decatur 101 Job 1110
Michigan railway 849 Job 1128
Northern Ohio traction & Light Co Job 1144
Chicago South Bend & Northern Indiana Railway Co Job 1118
Municipal Street Railway 24 Job 1119
City Electric Job 1130
Atchison Railway Light & Power Co of Kansas Job 1134
City car for Columbia Job 1155
Saginaw-Bay City Job 1176
Municipal tramways of Bogota Job 1186
St Louis Co #72A Job 1178
Lightweight city car for Mobile Alabama Job 1184
The Car Company Goes to War
Job 1230
Jobs 1220, 1240
Birney Battleground: St Louis v Brill
Job 1203
Job 1211
Job 1233
Job 1249
Job 1260
Job 1264
Job 1266
Job 1310
Job 1317
Job 1320
Job 1294
Job 1322
St Louis Quality Seats Catalogue No 101 Interlude #2
Reversible City Car Seats
Interurban Reversible Seats
Longitudinal cushions and Backs
Dimensions of Standard City Car Reversible Seat
Reversible Seat Mechanism parts
Job 1349
Dabbling in Doodlebugs
Job 1329
Job 1368A
Job 1358
Jobs 1379, 1380
Job 1391
Job 1392
Job 1402
Job 1407
Job 1415
Job 1451
Job 1462
Jobs 1470, 1471
Job 1470
Great Northern Ry Job 1468
Job 1503
The Car Co Enters the Air Age
Job 1518
Job 1507
Job 1510
Job 1530
Job 1534
Job 6162
A rescue by Detroit
Job 1540
Jobs 1541, 1542
Job 1555
Job 1566
Job 1559
Job 1562
Job 1568
Job 1573
Job 1578
Job 1584
Job 1577
Fancy Footwork Leads to a PCC Breakthrough
Job 1600
Job 1600
Job 1601
Job 1602
Job 1585
Job 1608
Job 1606
Job 1629
Job 1596
Job 1704
Job 1617
Job 1704
Job 1617
Job 1619
Job 1610
Job 1602
Job 1620
Job 1621
Job 1625
Job 1706
Job 1703
Job 1707
Jobs 1708, 1709
Trundling Off to War - Again
Job 1725
Job 2030
Job 1741
Job 1717
Boom Years While They Lasted
Job 1649
Jobs 1649, 1731
Job 1661
Job 1743
Job 1744
Job 1644
Job 1739
Job 1749
Job 1754
Job 1669
Job 1756
Job 1765
Job 1672
Job 1764
Job 1675
The Last Trolley Coaches
Job 1770
Job 1774
Job 1786
Job 1773
Job 1786
Job 1804
Trial and Error
Job 2009
Job 1814, 1818
Job 1837
Job 1835, 1836
Job 1831
Job 1841, 1852, 1850
Job 1857
Job 2D
Jetway to Oblivion
Job 2030/IA
The Colorful Car Co
Job 1621
Job 1717
Job 1420
Job 663
Job 1824
Job 84
Job 1858/IC
Job 1327
INTRODUCTION
THIS Is AN ALBUM of official photographs; portraits of newly built transport vehicles intended to flatter and dignify. The vehicles are the products of the St. Louis Car Company, in business from 1887 to 1974. Located at first in St. Louis and relocated to Baden (North St. Louis) in 1898, the St. Louis Car Company was an enterprise of St. Louis's Kobusch family. After getting into financial difficulties, they sold out in 1910 to John I. Beggs of the North American Company. He regarded the Company as a private investment and immediately turned over the day-to-day operations of the plant to his personal assistant, Edwin B. Meissner. Within a very few years, Meissner became company president and a major stockholder, finally achieving majority ownership and control in 1925.
In 1920 part of the plant was destroyed by fire and many old records were consumed. Most pre-1898 records had been disposed of prior to 1910, since Beggs on taking over is known to have had little knowledge of them. Unquestionably the 1920 fire further thinned still-surviving records and photographs. But those photographs which survived 1920 unscathed now provide us, as they did St. Louis Car Company, with a substantially complete record of all production after the year 1908. It is on that surviving collection of photographs that this album is based and though in years to come it is possible that some of the earlier photographs may come to light, what currently exists is itself a treasure trove.
When St. Louis Car Company began business in 1887 as a manufacturer of street railway and railroad cars, photography was already a half-century old. It had become normal practice in the car building industry for manufacturers to take official photographs of each job turned out of their plants and to record activities and changes within the plant itself. Prior to 1898 and again after 1920, the St. Louis Car Company hired commercial photographers to record their output. In between times, the Company maintained its own in-house photo facilities, and they themselves recorded some of their own busiest years. Until the 1930's, whether their own or commercially hired, normal photographic equipment comprised tripod-mounted 8" x 10" dry plate cameras producing a glass plate negative and crisp contact prints from that negative.
With such bulky and cumbersome equipment, it was the photographer's responsibility to go out in all weathers and photograph the most unprepossessing of subjects in the most flattering manner possible. Streetcars and railroad cars were in the main large, ungainly and static, often without character or intrinsic aesthetic merit, at least in the eyes of their contemporaries. It was the photographer's job to turn these box-like ugly ducklings into elegant swans, while at the same time highlighting the quality work and attention to detail the car builder's staff had lavished on them.
Though this was his job, he was not given much to encourage him to do it well. Often there would be the most limited amount of time with which to work. He would have no chance to wait for the best light and no meaningful say in the positioning of the car. Usually, a representative sample could be pictured only in the short interval between out-shopping and shipping. Often the car was already tied down to a railroad flatcar awaiting transport to the dispatch point. Frequently it would rain, many times it would snow, occasionally there would be fog. St. Louis is one of the many cities in America of which it is said "if you don't like the weather here, stick around. It'll change in five minutes." But one thing that can be relied on in St. Louis is the annual hot, sticky, sunny summer, and the blaze of that high summer sun frequently caused lens flare, ruining many otherwise workmanlike photographs. Time and again a poorly positioned vehicle, ready for dispatch in the summer months, could only be photographed against the light, and the result was a washed-out image, dark shadows and a soft, flared photo.
Plate cameras are very slow and awkward to work with but when the picture is right, they cannot be surpassed for quality of image. That is as true today as ever it was, and is the reason such cameras (now shooting sheet film rather than glass plates) are still demanded by the quality-conscious professional. But it was as easy then as it is now to produce poor pictures, and in the circumstances under which a photographer had to work at the St. Louis Car Company plant, no matter how hard he tried, that final all-important negative would not always be good enough. Then the photographic retouchers, with their air brushes, razor blades and pencils, would have to take over.
Such problems weren't confined to the glass-plate years. When the commercial photographers serving the Car Company changed over from glass plates to sheet film in the 1930's, using cameras of somewhat greater mobility and technical versatility, they still seemed to harvest a wondrous crop of pictures suffering from blur, poor focus, bad angles, indifferent light and incorrect exposure. Many vehicle orders built just prior to World War II have less-than-technicallyexcellent official portraits for just those reasons. The then very slow speed of color film ruled out its use in all but a few experimental cases-more's the pity, for the few samples reproduced here show how color could lift even the dullest photograph and turn it into a very special portrait.
The technological advances in cameras, film and technique that have taken place since the 1960's bring with them their own set of problems. The well-nigh universal acceptance of the hand-held 35mm single lens reflex camera, with its very small image and its ease of operation, has robbed the official photograph of its previous cool, detached perfection, substituting instead a not-very-inspiring literal or candid view of the subject, warts and all. The smallness of the image compounds the technical problems of grain, visual quality and insensitive posing. For that reason, therefore, I have chosen only a very few photographs that were taken after 1963.
But it is not my intention to be hard on the photographers. It is a measure of the skill of those unknown and unnamed people that in spite of the chronically poor photographic environment at the plant, they very largely succeeded in their task of capturing the vehicles at their best. Almost every photograph in this album shows off the cars, and even their bare bones, in a warm and sympathetic light, while the high quality of workmanship shouts at the viewer from every picture.
Most of the pictures reproduced here were taken in and around the 64-acre Baden complex in North St. Louis, but copies of these pictures have circulated worldwide. That is scarcely surprising, since these photographs were from the first intended for distribution and today private collectors possess much material originally emanating from the Car Company. Many got their photographs as publicity handouts at the time the cars were new. Others got them as donations when the equipment was no longer so new, with the original owner no longer bang-the-drum proud. Frequently the operating companies, perhaps after a change of ownership, or a move to new premises, simply had to make a fresh start and would do so by throwing out decades of trash. Often the trash would include stacks of photographs. In those pre-trash compactor days, such material would find its way into garbage cans largely undamaged. Poking through trash cans or dumpsters is hardly a seemly occupation for the average person, but many of the photographs in this book have survived because someone has done just that.
Sometimes collectors would buy official portraits of their favorite cars from the Car Company itself. Moreover in later years it was not unknown for the Car Company to give away pictures to any legitimate individual who seemed to have need for them. Of late, some of these official photographs have found their way into flea markets, junk sales and railroadiana swap meets. I myself have collected scores of photographs from these sources and am as proud of them as if I had bought diamonds, for to me these pictures are indeed gems.
But in all those years of wide circulation of official pictures, the St. Louis Car Company maintained its own efficient and comprehensive photo file. It was a necessary element of the Company's business. The advertising cuts reproduced in this scrapbook show how the official portraits could be dressed up to sell cars. The collection of specialties, a photo series little known to outsiders, was also extensively utilized, since the Car Company for years had a malleable and gray iron foundry, enabling them to fabricate everything from seat frames to car gongs. They even wove their own rattan and upholstered their own seats. The very best photos, retouched, vignetted and graphically polished, would grace the Car Company's catalogues, and again a few samples are reproduced in this album.
Though for the reasons I have discussed the St. Louis Car Company photo file was never wholly complete, it remained a most valuable company resource right until the end. It is our good fortune, and the good fortune of generations to come, that when the Company finally went out of business in 1974, General Steel Industries, through Edwin B. Meissner Jr., the last of the Meissner family to be associated with the company, donated the surviving papers, drawings and photographs to Washington University in St. Louis.
This album, though arranged in chronological order of time, is not intended to be an item-by-item photographic inventory of St. Louis Car Company products. Rather I have chosen the pictures to emphasize the main trends of car design over the years, to feature the rarer car-owning properties and to emphasize the unusual. Old trolleys and old railroads cars were not always perceived as things of beauty at the time they were built, but a gauzy haze of nostalgia certainly adds to the attraction of their official portraits today. Yet one doesn't have to wallow in nostalgia to appreciate the very skilled and careful work which went into both the manufacture and decoration of these vehicles. That too I have tried to illustrate with the pictures available, and I have therefore included many interior views of cars. From those interior views one gets penetrating insight into the order of society in a different age. One only has to compare the sumptuousness of the average railroad or interurban car with the spartan comforts of the average city streetcar to see that in function and clientele they were worlds apart.
The railroad and interurban wooed the discretionary passenger, seducing them with soft seats, fancy woodwork and generally superior amenities. Since they were competing against the privately-owned horse and buggy, there was no contest on other than the shortest of trips. Railed transport was incomparably better than private road transport. But when the discretionary passengers bought their first automobiles, standards of comfort rose even higher as the railroads and interurbans fought a losing battle to stay competitive. On the other hand, the city trolley for much of the early 20th century had a total monopoly of non-discretionary short-distance transport. Trolley owners were only concerned about packing in the great unwashed on their journeys to and from work and the stores. The more they packed in, the greater the profits.
It's a pity some of the earlier trolley pictures haven't survived, for in the early 1890's, when people were scared of electricity, cities were smaller, and the electric trolley's place in urban transit was minor and precarious, city streetcars were as well equipped internally as a Pullman Palace car on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Not until the 1930's, when city rail transit was fighting for its life against the bus and the private automobile, were passengers again treated to a little more comfort. The very furnishings of the cars tell you this. Collectively, therefore, this set of official portraits gives a very good idea of how attitudes gradually changed over the decades.
Another function of the official photographer was the recording of the plant's daily life. Changes in buildings and equipment, modifications in tooling, introduction of new production methods and the like, were all faithfully photographed, as was the never-ending parade of visitors to the plant. It is with this category of photographs that the greatest difficulty arises since very few of them are identified as to date, building or process. Most upsetting of all are the photographs of plant officers and staff which cannot be identified. No one thought it necessary at the time to identify the individuals concerned, since the workforce and the executive personnel barely changed over the years. Everyone was known then, but not today. That is unfortunate. I have therefore had to keep to a minimum group photographs of this kind and have concentrated on pictures of identifiable Car Company personnel, following them down through the years.
The photographs for this album have mostly been drawn from a collection of official St. Louis Car Company photographs I have collected from various sources over a long period. It has been supplemented with pictures from the St. Louis Car Company collection housed at Washington University Archives in St. Louis. I want to thank Washington University and Mrs. Beryl Manne, the archivist, for permission to reproduce photographs from that collection. Washington University Archives photographs are identified with the credit WUA at the end of the written caption, signifying the St. Louis Car Collection, Washington University Archives, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130. I also want to thank Edwin J. Klasky of St. Louis for allowing me to use pictures from his collection. Mr. Klasky knew both Edwin B. Meissner Sr. and Jr. very well and it is thanks to their generosity in former years that he was able to build up his collection of pictures. All photographs otherwise uncredited are from the author's collection.
Job numbers refer to the job identification number in the St. Louis Car Company job order book preserved at Washington University Archives. These numbers are not always in chronological sequence, and in the case of the aircraft seem not even to have been allocated, but as I have said before, I have attempted to put the pictures into a proper time frame without reference to the job numbers. So far as I know only one job number was ever duplicated in the main series. This was #2030 which was allocated both to 700 PT23 airplanes built in 1943 and 1944 for military use and to 40 jetways (described in the order book as telescoping walkways) built in 1969/70 for Dortech, to be used at JFK Airport, New York.
Finally, it is my hope that this album of photographs gives the reader as great enjoyment and pleasure as the contemplation of their originals has given me.
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