My grandfather's family took the train West from PA when gramps was age five.

J

JonMyrlennBailey

Active member
My grandfather once told me that when he was age five, his family rode the train from Pennsylvania to San Francisco so his father could take work in business following his disability from a coal mining accident. My grandfather had a baby brother at that time.

This was circa 1913 so it's safe to say his family rode on a passenger train pulled by at least one steam locomotive. He may have rode several trains over several railroad companies or was there just one coat-to-coast railroad then in America called the Transcontinental Railroad?

What types of passenger cars did he likely ride on: Pullman Heavyweights?

What were the likely locomotives: Baldwins, Pacifics, ALCO's?

Whether my grandfather's family made the entire train trip without stopping over in any towns along the way, he never did tell me.

Having a private sleeping compartment may have been expensive for a family of four even back then especially if the man was in between jobs.

How my grandfather's family's household belongs got moved to SF I never did find out also. Did railroads offer moving service then? They may have just traveled poor
and light with a few bags.
 
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RR's do not move furniture, nor your moving van

Train tickets do not allow stop overs, as the tickets are sold point to point, on a single day trip basis
 
But we are talking about the year 1913.

It is possible that grampa may have traveled the JOURNEY over two or more train tickets if stopover on a single ticket was not an option even then.
I hate to think they suffered the whole 2,500-mile journey in no more than coach seats to TRY TO sleep in then again they may have had a first-class ticket.

At least covered wagon travelers got to make camp for the night heading west. Remember the Donner Party.

It's a question of how many hours straight a person can stand being cooped up on a train without a real bed to sleep in
or a perfectly flat supine position to lay down in.

I once traveled Amtrak from Oakland to Denver round trip on coach, no stopover, and never want to repeat that tortuous journey again.

36 hours minimum each way if the train is even running on time. Going to Denver the train was five hours late having been held up
in Salt Lake City by a supposed freight derailment ahead according to the conductor. The California Zephyr in the mid-1980's was anything
but speedy like the wind.

It's fun and fascinating to wonder what train travel all across America was like during the era of silent pictures, the Wright Brothers, Babe Ruth, Teddy Roosevelt and Ford Tin Lizzys.
I believe Pullman cars even had such luxuries as air-conditioning. Before commercial air travel, trains were supposedly top-notch over land.

Can one even get an excursion ride along the Transcontinental Railroad TODAY, from coast to coast, on such vintage rolling stock as steam engines and Heavyweight cars?
 
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I forget who it was, Thadeus Stevens, or Daniel Webster, he requested to have a rocking chair mounted to a flatcar, so he could enjoy the full ambiance of great wide open vistas on the US transcontinental railroad, in a stovepipe hat ... I think he was a bit off is rocker ... a real LooLoo

There was a time when there was no Air Conditioning

Riding a train is not for everyone

Amtrak is all you got to choose from ... take it ... or leave it
 
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Air conditioning didn't really get widespread until the 1930's

And allot of people did not bathe more than once a week, if that
 
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It sounds like humanity has seen some funky days in history.

I think people are funky now for beard-wearing and tatts.

Maybe the super rich could ride on air-conditioned trains before 1900.
 
The first air conditioner wasn't invented until 1902, and nobody had them anywhere, until the 1930's

Ice box's were filled by horse and wagon delivery, from ice stored in 52 F degree mines, packed in sawdust, harvested from lakes, from the winter before ... after @ May there was no ice, anywhere, and meats were salted, and hung to prevent spoilage.

Animals were freshly slaughtered daily for consumers, disease was rampid, and people were dying all the time
 
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Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted polio 12 years before he became president, and required an "Iron Lung" room that was refrigerated with ice

In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Hospitals set up special units with iron lung machines to keep polio victims alive. Rich kids as well as poor were left paralyzed.

People had a hand fan ... that was it !

It was like Gillagan's Island ... No nothing

The most advanced technology was the hand cranked, wind up phonograph record player, with carbon graphite records

1950s In the post-World War II economic boom, residential air conditioning becomes just another way to keep up with the Jones's. More than 1 million units are sold in 1953 alone. 1970s Window units lose cool points as central air comes along. The units consist of a condenser, coils, and a fan.

The Columbian between Jersey City and Washington was the first air-conditioned passenger train in North America. Air-conditioned equipment began operating on the train on May 24, 1931. IN 1937 the B&O re-equipped the Columbian with cars from the Royal Blue.

I found all this by typing in actual wurdz on GOOGLE
 
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I did not realize the human race was still so primitive up until a few years before I was born in 1964. My parents were living in Arizona when I came along and we were lucky to have a/c in our apartment back then. How we survived in Phoenix, Arizona with no a/c in our car, I am not sure but by the time I was two, my family had moved into the much cooler SF Bay Area.

Most people would die in Phoenix without a/c at least in their homes.

I had the blessing of getting a polio-prevention vaccine when I was quite young. This was in the early 1970's. I was born late enough in history to have dodged the threat of polio.
I think polio is pretty much long dead in America by now and the only "iron lungs" now are metal tanks used by scuba divers.

A/c now is as common on passenger trains as flanged metal wheels. Though that Amtrak trip I was on in 1986 stunk, there was still working A/C even back then, I was thankful for that much. Stepping out at Grand Junction, CO desert during the summer mid-day for a Marlboro while the train was at a stop it was like walking into an ice box getting back on the train though the interior smelled of mold. A/c is as common on automobiles now as windshield wipers.
 
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Yes ... we are spoiled rotten in the US and worldwide ... At one time we had No internet ... No TV, No color TV until the late 1950's ... No AM radios ... No telephones ... No cars ... movie theaters eventually had color and sound, and before that there were No Talkies, Silent films, where you had to read the print at the bottom of the screen, and cost 10 cents and candy was an additional 5 cents ... a loaf of bread was 10 cents ... No aeroplanes, No electricity, No gas lamps, No running water, No Hot Water, No flush toilets ... horse pulled trolleys, and train travel was hot, with a window open, and you had a hand fan, way up until the 1950's, and photography was B&W that took 3 weeks to get your prints
 
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In Australia we have a train that travels all the way across the country east to west, From Sydney to Perth. From Adelaide it takes 2 nights and a day to get to Perth, I did it twice in coach sitting all the way.
Another train goes from Melbourne to Darwin, not sure how long that takes.
Cheers, Mike
 
My dad's grandparents traveled from New York City to Omaha around 1908 where my grandfather was born shortly afterwards. They then journeyed back to NYC where they remained. The reason for the trip is unknown, but perhaps to look for a business opportunity. My great grandfather, in the Fiddler on The Roof tradition, was a tailor. :)

I didn't know about the trip until I was much older, and sadly had I known I could have asked my great grandmother who died in the 1970s. She came to the US from the Ukraine in 1898 and once she established herself and sent for him afterwards. She came over on board an ocean liner in one of the lower berths along with her sister and cousins. She had to travel from the Ukraine via Poland to Germany then over to Great Britain where she left from Liverpool to the US. She was only 18 at the time she made this trip.

Here's an interesting article about the Pullman Co.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts...e-and-comfort-pullman-sleeping-car-180949300/

I picture her trip from NYC to Omaha being done on the New York Central as far as Chicago then on a trip via the Union Pacific to Omaha.

I agree people back then were quite a bit more resilient than they are today.
 
My grandfather's family may have rode NYC (or maybe Pennsylvania RR?) to Chicago from PA then possibly rode UP to San Francisco (or Oakland??). There was no national Amtrak back then before World War I.
Certainly they had to have traveled the Transcontinental route. My maternal grandfather was born in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania in 1908!

I can't imagine small children coach-sitting such a long train journey all the way. I know how crabby little boys get when they lack sleep. Even long car rides were agonizing for me at age five.


Mom, are we THERE yet?
 
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JCitron said:
My dad's grandparents traveled from New York City to Omaha around 1908 where my grandfather was born shortly afterwards. They then journeyed back to NYC where they remained. The reason for the trip is unknown, but perhaps to look for a business opportunity. My great grandfather, in the Fiddler on The Roof tradition, was a tailor. :)

I didn't know about the trip until I was much older, and sadly had I known I could have asked my great grandmother who died in the 1970s. She came to the US from the Ukraine in 1898 and once she established herself and sent for him afterwards. She came over on board an ocean liner in one of the lower berths along with her sister and cousins. She had to travel from the Ukraine via Poland to Germany then over to Great Britain where she left from Liverpool to the US. She was only 18 at the time she made this trip.

Here's an interesting article about the Pullman Co.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts...e-and-comfort-pullman-sleeping-car-180949300/

I picture her trip from NYC to Omaha being done on the New York Central as far as Chicago then on a trip via the Union Pacific to Omaha.

I agree people back then were quite a bit more resilient than they are today.
Click to expand...

The death of President Lincoln in 1865 made the Pullman car an overnight success.

Mr. George M. Pullman was the evil and ruthless "J.R.Ewing" of the American train business back then.

Everybody must have wanted the man dead. His employees. RR unions. Porters of color.
Was his fatal heart attack induced by a RR union boss who slipped a mickey in his drink?

For me and many Americans, PULLMAN has always been synonymous with PASSENGER TRAIN
the way HARLEY-DAVIDSON is synonymous with AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE.
 
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JonMyrlennBailey said:
The death of President Lincoln in 1965 made the Pullman car an overnight success.

Mr. George M. Pullman was the evil and ruthless "J.R.Ewing" of the American train business back then.

Everybody must have wanted the man dead. His employees. RR unions. Porters of color.
Was his fatal heart attack induced by a RR union boss who slipped a mickey in his drink?

For me and many Americans, PULLMAN has always been synonymous with PASSENGER TRAIN
the way HARLEY-DAVIDSON is synonymous with AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE.
Click to expand...

You might mean 1865 ;)

But that's how business was back then Frick, JP Morgan and all the others were ruthless as well. Morgan got his initial cash by selling bad armament to the Union during the Civil War and later made a killing when he bailed out the US Government when they ran out of cash by charging interest on the loans. He later went on to control the railroads in order to channel and control the supply chain for his businesses. He nearly lost it all in 1910 when there was a panic. He had controlling interest in the New Haven and Boston and Maine, and was pushing to own both through the New Haven when the crash hit. In the end he sold both off and the railroads ended up in bankruptcy because of it. I learned about this in a history class I took at UMass during the 2009. Very interesting times, and some I wouldn't want to live in.

In response to your other post:

Your family most likely took the Lehigh Valley up to Buffalo where they switched to the NYC or Erie, or they traveled a across the river and rode the DL&W which also went to Buffalo, if they came up from Nanticoke as that's in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, which was deep in coal country just outside of Wilkes Barre. The Lehigh Valley Railroad and DL&W controlled a big hunk of the traffic in that region through subsidiaries and controlling interest in local companies and competed heartlessly with the CNJ, LNE, D&H, and others in the area. The Erie had some interest in the area too and so did the Pennsy, but not much like other places, and the Erie didn't merge with the DL&W until 50 years after your grand parents were in the area to become the Erie Lackawanna in the early 1960s.

Another Trainzer and I took a trip down that way to investigate the region. He had some business to tend to down there and we went on a historic rail side trip, which was interesting. We camped out at a campsite in Jim Thorpe and ended up renting a car because his vehicle died. We went all over the place visiting Tamaqua, Lansford where we visited old No. 9 mining museum, which is the mine tunnel of the last operating Anthracite mine in the US that closed in the early 1970s. There's so much lost there both in mining and railroading today, that in some places there's not even a trace of any railroad anywhere.

You might want to look further into your Pennsylvania roots. There's probably some interesting history there.
 
JCitron said:
You might mean 1865 ;)

But that's how business was back then Frick, JP Morgan and all the others were ruthless as well. Morgan got his initial cash by selling bad armament to the Union during the Civil War and later made a killing when he bailed out the US Government when they ran out of cash by charging interest on the loans. He later went on to control the railroads in order to channel and control the supply chain for his businesses. He nearly lost it all in 1910 when there was a panic. He had controlling interest in the New Haven and Boston and Maine, and was pushing to own both through the New Haven when the crash hit. In the end he sold both off and the railroads ended up in bankruptcy because of it. I learned about this in a history class I took at UMass during the 2009. Very interesting times, and some I wouldn't want to live in.

In response to your other post:

Your family most likely took the Lehigh Valley up to Buffalo where they switched to the NYC or Erie, or they traveled a across the river and rode the DL&W which also went to Buffalo, if they came up from Nanticoke as that's in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, which was deep in coal country just outside of Wilkes Barre. The Lehigh Valley Railroad and DL&W controlled a big hunk of the traffic in that region through subsidiaries and controlling interest in local companies and competed heartlessly with the CNJ, LNE, D&H, and others in the area. The Erie had some interest in the area too and so did the Pennsy, but not much like other places, and the Erie didn't merge with the DL&W until 50 years after your grand parents were in the area to become the Erie Lackawanna in the early 1960s.

Another Trainzer and I took a trip down that way to investigate the region. He had some business to tend to down there and we went on a historic rail side trip, which was interesting. We camped out at a campsite in Jim Thorpe and ended up renting a car because his vehicle died. We went all over the place visiting Tamaqua, Lansford where we visited old No. 9 mining museum, which is the mine tunnel of the last operating Anthracite mine in the US that closed in the early 1970s. There's so much lost there both in mining and railroading today, that in some places there's not even a trace of any railroad anywhere.

You might want to look further into your Pennsylvania roots. There's probably some interesting history there.
Click to expand...


Typo on Abe Lincoln death year. We can thank John Wilkes Booth for the success of Pullman train cars. Pullman's use of his new fancy car for Lincoln's funeral train was a smashing success in the state of Illinois. A publicity stunt that paid huge dividends and put the Pullman car in the history books. Honest Abe was a big train buff and travelled extensively on them while in office. He even wrote Gettysburg Address on a train. Pullman cleverly used the Lincoln funeral train as a promotional for his new car.

Anyway, my grandfather got to California by rail somehow from Pennsylvania in 1913 and his family
survived the trip somehow, a/c or no a/c, or I would not be here today to type this. His father, a German immigrant, was a coal miner
who was injured and had to come to San Francisco to take new work in some sort of business, banking or something.

I am sure my great grandfather being the head of a coal mining family was a tough bird and could endure the passenger trains available then
at whatever comfort levels the railroads offered. I am sure porters of color likely handled their baggage and I believe they were always called "George".
(Probably after George M. Pullman??)

The trains still had to have been much less punishing than stage coaches.
 
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For the last time ... They did NOT have any Air Conditioning on trains, nor anywhere else, for that matter ... the technology just didn't exist, and was not employed until after the 1930's, and up until the 1950's Air Conditioning was NOT in most places, at all ... they had overhead fans, and hand fans ... they did not have gasoline generators to power such devices ... It was HOT

I think that you are totally perverting history a bit, as to the assassin JWB ... Pullman and his "publicity stunt" ... and Lincoln was not a "Choo Choo Buff" ... the train was the only way to travel, being as the automobile was not yet invented, and roads did not exist, except for deeply rutted mud paths, and canal boats and stage coachs that took weeks to get to St Louis ... travel was at a snails pace, and weather was HOT

And as to your reference: "porters of color likely handled their baggage" I find your terminology, in many of your nonsensical threads, quite racially prejudicial, and deeply disturbing
 
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I am not arguing that they did have a/c at any particular time in history.

Fine then, my grandfather's family may have sweated like a pig depending on what time of year they rode the train to Cally.

My grandfather and I rode BART in the summer of 1975. I know darn well that had a/c even then. It was like riding in a walk-in freezer.

My grandfather never had a/c in any of his cars though and did not think any need for them in automobiles. Living on the SF Peninsula, a/c was not critical
in that part of the country. There is seldom need for a/c in San Francisco.

BART was probably the first-and-only A/C-cooled train he ever rode in his entire life.

But they conveyed Lincoln's body by train through a number of states for some reason.
 
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