All Aboard: Railroad Collector Cards Series #1

It's not every day that I get to combine my two main hobbies into one blog post, but thanks to my latest eBay purchase of a set of railroad collector cards from the now defunct All Aboard Collector cards company, I can do that here today.  

This is a set of 46 cards released in 1991 that focuses on railroads from the Great Lakes region.  It is limited to just 10,000 total sets and I was lucky enough to get two sealed sets for about $5 including shipping. I'm keeping one sealed and I opened the other so I could check out all of the awesome train photos from the past.

The cards are all horizontal and feature a pretty simple design, which is nice because it keeps the focus on the actual photographs of the trains. The card stock they are printed on is slightly thinner and flimsier than most of my hockey cards. They're also actually not exactly 2.5" x 3.5" overall, they come in just a tiny bit longer and narrower.

The first card I am going to show depicts my favorite railroad, the Detroit & Mackinac, which was a short line based in north eastern Michigan. They were sold off in 1992 and became a different railroad, so it's neat to have a card that shows them in their prime.

The card backs also pretty simple, but they do have a pretty good write up about the photo on the front. What's neat about the main locomotive in this picture, No. 469, is that I actually have a picture of myself standing on the front of it when I was about five years old.

Since all of the backs are the same, I thought I would share some of the cards that stood out to me when sorting through the 46 card set. This one features two GP40-2's in the rather colorful Chessie System paint scheme.

The next one features two F7A's and a GP9 in the rather bland Penn Central paint scheme. This one stood out because of the dark engines against the bright blue sky, which make for a nice photo. This was taken in Jackson, MI back in May of 1976.

Here's another nice looking photo, this time featuring Amtrak's "Empire Builder" train passing through Wisconsin back in May of 1990. The locomotives shown leading this train are both F40PH's in Amtrak's phase III paint scheme.

Up next is a cool shot of DeKalb County Co-Op's Baldwin switcher locomotive shown in Waterloo, Indiana back in July of 1983. What stood out in this picture was the nice green field and flowers shown in the foreground.

This next one stood out because of the railroad crossing sign that takes up the right hand side of the photo. These things are usually white so it was interesting to see one in yellow. The other thing that caught my eye was the orange DT&I paint scheme on the locomotive.

This one is not as flashy, but has a cool scene of several Green Bay & Western locomotives pulling a train through a wooded area. What's nice about this photo is the lack of man-made structures in the background or foreground.

Finally we have this one showing two Soo Line F7A's awaiting their assignment in Manistique, Michigan during August of 1968. These locomotives always stood out to me with their bright red noses and white bodies with bold black lettering.

So there's something you don't see on here every day. What do you guys think? Any other train enthusiasts out there that have seen or already own this set? I think they're great and now I need to get myself a couple copies of the series #2 that was released after this set.