Mary Jayne Rowe of Covington, Va., — who disseminated railroad history bit-by-bit through the U.S. Mail via her railroad postcards — died on Oct. 9 at the age of 82. She leaves behind her husband of 59 years, John Z. Rowe.
Rowe’s company, Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialties was incorporated back in May 1973. At the time, the Rowes owned a land surveying company in South Florida, but the postcard sideline soon blossomed into a business in its own right.
Mary Jayne’s became a publisher and reseller of thousands of railroad cards. By the time the St. Petersburg Times ran a picture of Rowe’s table at a local postcard show on the front of its features page in 1978, it ran with the caption, “Mary Jayne Rowe’s specialty is train cards—7,500 of them!”
Aviation postcards would join the railroad cards later on—long after the Rowes’ relocation to Virginia in 1979 and an active version of retirement.
Mary Jayne and husband John were also authors and railroad historians. They researched and wrote articles on the postwar Friendship Train, which provided food and supplies to a Europe still trying to recover from World War II, and its counterpart of 1949 known The Merci Train, which consisted of forty-nine French “40 and 8” cars filled with gifts sent to the United States as a thank you by the people of France.
The patriotic and outgoing Rowes were honored in 2000 on the floor of Congress for their work preserving the history of the American Freedom Train and the Preamble Express of the 1970s, as well as the original 1947-1949 Freedom Train. They rode the 1975-1976 American Freedom Train and were familiar sights at reunions in recent years.
Mary Jayne’s ceased publishing postcards in 2000, but you’ll still find Rowe’s postcards in a place unfamiliar at the time of the company’s founding back in 1973: the Internet. A recent eBay search yields at least 50 different Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialties postcards still for sale, cards which depict everything from steam trains to 727 airplanes. You’ll also still find Rowe’s cards for sale halfway around the world in Switzerland, where an aviation postcard website selling over 20 different Mary Jayne’s cards is based.
Other cards live on in the collections of railfans everywhere. And perhaps, just perhaps, there are even a few in the U.S. Mail right now.
Who doesn't have postcards from Mary Jane? Me too! Bought some of mine at Jack Showalter's first operation.
Unlike David, I had never heard of Mary Jayne, probably because I was raised in CA, and we thought Mary Jane was another name for the crop grown in the emerald triangle.
Obviously her passing is a loss to civilization even though she had stopped publishing.
David, Mary Jayne Rowe is one of the unsung heroes of railway preservation, as is her husband John. All of us who like trains–or airplanes–are in their debt. The first thing I ever had published was a caption on a Mary Jayne's postcard for a locomotive we had preserved at the Florida Railroad Museum, south of Tampa. I was 14 at the time. Mary Jayne learned my age and went out of her way to compliment me on the quality of the caption. I'll never forget that. –Jackson McQuigg
Dav
Jackson, thanks so much for relaying this story. I don't know how many of Mary Jane's postcards I purchased on Southern steam trips as a teenager in the 1970's; cards which I still have today. The cards depicted local equipment (including steam), as well as equipment from far away places like New York and California (at least far away to me in the 1970's). I always thought it was interesting that a lady's name was on the postcard, as the percentage of women interested in railroading in the '70s wasn't as high as it is today (from what I could tell). Also, I never realized that she produced aviation cards. I'm sorry to hear that she's gone, but I will never forget this name and the neat postcards produced by her.