The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Something about trains makes them utterly fascinating.  They are an iconic feature of our country’s history, serving since the mid 19^th century as a sturdy, economical, and appealing way to move us and our possessions across the countrywide.   

Today’s tourists adore them for their capacity to dramatize the past and the picturesque.  Intercity rail routes efficiently transport us to and from work.  140,000 miles of rails link 600 common carrier freight lines and generate $274 billion in American economic output annually.  Even after they disappear, the trains leave behind architectural gems that become everything from pharmacies to community centers.  And ever-growing miles of discontinued routes give us rails-to-trails.  But for many of us, above all else, trains produce nostalgic memories.      

 Growing up in the 1950s I remember some of the last steam trains huffing and clanking into our imposing granite station at the apex of town.  Later in the same decade, my Christmas present was an electric train that looked just like what I had seen.  My pals and I would argue about which kind of track worked better (American Flyer versus Lionel), and our dads shared our hobby enthusiastically.    

By the time I reached high school, diesels with plenty of amenities dominated the tracks west of Chicago.  A travel highlight for me was a cross-country “vista dome” trip with classmates to Montana in 1962.  As we saw virgin country under starry skies, while traveling in silver-sided comfort that featured dining tables and Pullman compartments, I was definitely impressed.

Many years would pass before I took another train ride, but in the meantime, I taught American history in public schools.  Thereby I came to appreciate the instrumental role of railroads as an engine of industry during the Progressive Era.  My students and I discovered the pivotal role of rails during the Civil War, and afterward in helping unify the country.   

Train stories carry an unsurpassable mystique.  Countless novels and films have built plots around train robberies, break-neck chases, and monumental disasters usually staged on wooden bridges.  Every time we start to forget “Murder on the Orient Express”, a remake appears!   One historian aptly described the American railroad’s imagery as comparable to the churches of Europe in the Middle Ages.

At the same time, trains explain many innovations we now take for granted.  Just to illustrate, consider the railroad’s unifying effect on how we tell time.  In post-Civil War days, historian Seymour Morris tells us, cities and towns across the country relied on the clocks of church steeples. There were 300 different times across the country, thus creating scheduling chaos for train travelers.   Railroad authorities tried to solve the problem with a daunting 600-page compendium of schedules.  Fortunately, an 1883 General Time Convention rescued the railroads by adopting the time zones we use today.   

Two personal impressions of trains leave me awe-struck.  First, work used require me to travel by rail regularly from Albany to New York City.  The expansive beauty of the Hudson River always kept me glued to the windows, followed by the shock of a bustling beehive known as Penn Station.

My second impression comes from a hugely entertaining chronicle titled “Last Train to Paradise”.   Written by Les Standiford in 2002, the book describes how a wealthy oil executive named Henry Flegler stubbornly funded a railway from Miami to Key West, despite crippling hurricanes, across well over 100 miles of scrub brush islands, mangrove swamps, coral kays and keys, and open ocean. Flegler put Florida on the recreational map in the early 20^th century, but by 1935 the Florida East Coast Railway had gone bankrupt.  A modern highway covers much of the railway’s old route.  I look forward this spring to learning firsthand about the remains and myths created by this “railroad across the ocean”.   

Hundreds of miles northward, we have our own historically celebrated railroad where I live near Arcade, New York.  The Arcade and Attica line, fully launched in the early 1900s, boasts a diesel and the last operative steam locomotive in New York state.  It carries passengers, cargo, and stages an array of appealing special events throughout the year.

 My personal reminder of railroad life comes from the wail of a distant whistle as a daily commercial freight train wends it way north around 4 a.m.  Although it may seem frustrating to wait as miles of boxcars rattle past a crossing, these leviathans remind me of their legacy as a driver of our American destiny.