Who knew that #TrainTuesday could be so glamorous? This photograph features "Miss Careful Handling", a company-wide ambassador for the safe shipping of freight, alongside a Pennsylvania Railroad Company worker and train.
Georgia Malick, also a Miss America finalist representing New Jersey, was featured as "Miss Careful Handling" in a series of articles and photographs in the Pennsy Magazine. This image from set of photographs taken for a story printed in the January 15, 1966 issue. The crown also came with perks like travel to exotic destinations, such as the 44th annual meeting of the Southeast Shippers Advisory Board in Orlando, Florida's Cherry Plaza Hotel and a five-month tour of over 100 PRR freight yards.
This item is part of Hagley Library's collection of Pennsylvania Railroad photographs (Accession 1988.231). The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing.
The series of in the collection containing this image contains photographs, negatives, contact sheets and supporting notes from the Pennsy and its successor the Penn Central Post, the company magazines for employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad (later the Penn Central Transportation Company). Materials in this collection date from 1961 to 1976.
The photographs in this series document a variety of innovations and activities within the PRR and Penn Central (PC), including new and changing rail services, features on industries that used the PRR for shipping, industrial safety campaigns, regional employee organizations, and employee's accomplishments and avocational activities. The majority of the images feature employees. These images include men and women employed at all levels of the corporation, from PRR President Stuart Saunders to office staff to yard workers and maintenance crews. Most of these images are posed, featuring employees in uniform and actively involved in their jobs. Employees participating in charitable activities are also featured, assembling holiday food and gift baskets, working with underprivileged children and participating in fund or clothing drives. Many issues of the magazine also featured one or more photographs of employees involved in unusual or interesting hobbies and avocational activities, and these more casual images are also included in the collection.
Other photographs in the series relate more directly to the operations of the PRR/Penn Central railroad and include images of both passenger and freight car construction and maintenance. These include both interior and exterior views of railcars, including images of the construction and amenities of the then-new Metroliner passenger trains. Several hundred photographs feature the company-wide "Project Beaver" maintenance campaign run annually by the PRR in the early 1960s. Maintenance photographs also consist of images of repairs being made to tracks and to buildings and structures owned by the corporation. Corporate photographs also include a series of images charting the construction of the new Penn Station and Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Several thousand images throughout the collection and series deal with issues of industrial safety and safe shipping. A number of these images demonstrate proper safety procedures when working in railroad yards or feature employees who were saved from injury by the correct use of safety equipment like goggles or hard hats. Safe shipping was a major concern for the PRR/Penn Central, and the collection includes photographs showing damaged freight, classes demonstrating proper freight handling, and the warehouses and freight handling of companies who shipped materials with the railroad. Miss Careful Handling, a company wide ambassador for the safe shipping of freight, is also featured in a large series of articles and shots from the rear cover of the Pennsy. The shipping of large or unusual items is also featured in a number of photographs.