This postcard isn’t particularly pretty, but it shows the “new shops” opened by the Rock Island in (the caption says) East Moline, Illinois. Actually, the shops are in Silvis Illinois, which is next to East Moline and both are part of what in the 1930s would become known as the “Quad Cities,” meaning Davenport, Iowa, and East Moline, Moline, and Rock Island, Illinois.

Click image to download a 602-KB PDF of this postcard.

Construction on the shops began in 1903. This postcard has space for a message on the front while the back was to be exclusively used for the address and stamp, as until 1907 the Post Office didn’t allow messages on the backs of postcards. That dates this card to somewhere around 1904 to 1906. I’ve seen one postmarked 1905, which seems the most likely date it was issued.

Click image to go to Google’s satellite view of the Rock Island shops as they look today.

Normally, I wouldn’t devote a post to such a nondescript postcard that doesn’t have passenger train content, but I decided to make an exception when I discovered that the shops still exist (or at least some of them do) and are owned by Railroading Heritage of Midwest America to store and restore its fleet of passenger cars, steam locomotives, and other equipment. Two of the four buildings shown on the card survive today; the roundhouse is gone but its former location is revealed by the concrete pads that once supported each locomotive bay.

Railroading Heritage owns and operates the Milwaukee Road 261 and several Hiawatha passenger cars. Thanks to a 2022 donation by Union Pacific, it also owns several other locomotives including a 4-6-6-4 Challenger, a 2-10-2, and some Diesels, plus several former Union Pacific and Western Pacific passenger cars. So Rock Island may be gone, but its shops are playing an important role in railroad preservation today.