Why did classy American passenger trains die?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyY316jMahY

The fabulous '50's preserved by film!! 1954, ten years before even my own birth! Trains had class, railroads had class and people dressed like ladies and gentlemen, not like ghetto bums as today. Ike was president and Hollywood and railroads were still in their Golden Age. Automobiles and Harley-Davidsons were chrome and lacquer paint wonders of dreams. The innocence and simple old-fashioned fun would, I say forlorn, die later.Yes, the glory of the American dream in the Santa Fe passenger trains with streamlined GM/EMD F7 A and B locomotives and shiny silver-streak Pullman and Budd cars. Engineers in proper overalls. Porters, stewards and conductors in nice uniforms.Cooks are clean cut and clean-shaven in nice whites. No tatts and bearded grotiness back then. No smartphones or tech stuff to spoil the American countryside views.

Classy people started to "fly"!

So true, and years later in school the dress code was relaxed, now are we going to school to learn? or is it to be seen, admired for the classy clothes they wear , and I use that term loosely. hmmm....


People with Cell phones glued to screen step off of curbs, do they look to see if Xing is clear, most of the time no, I hope the Drivers r,,,,,But we do lose a lot of pedestrians in Crosswalks........For a variety of Reasons......


Yes things and people have changed, n some not for the better........Sad situation,


Thanks for the video........

blueodessey said:

So true, and years later in school the dress code was relaxed, now are we going to school to learn? or is it to be seen, admired for the classy clothes they wear , and I use that term loosely. hmmm....


People with Cell phones glued to screen step off of curbs, do they look to see if Xing is clear, most of the time no, I hope the Drivers r,,,,,But we do lose a lot of pedestrians in Crosswalks........For a variety of Reasons......


Yes things and people have changed, n some not for the better........Sad situation,


Thanks for the video........

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People can still dress plain while remaining clean, presentable and decent. Look at the Amish.

If boys and girls in school dressed as they did in the 1940's, they would look decent and human.

The cameras never lied. The pictures tell the whole story.

Ah, it's the sweeping generalisation thread.

The Great Depression, and World War fueled the economy, millions of troops, trucks, tanks, bombs, bomber parts, explosives, oil & fuel, etc ... etc ... were the main wartime commodity of the railroads. Without major World War the railroads began to collapse, and the passenger and trolley systems were being sabotaged by Eisenhower's motley crew of henchmen, who promoted the massive Interstate Road System constructions cross country. His cronies in organized crime (Ford & GM, oil and gas companies) all collectively conspired together, and bought up all the shares of railroad and trolley stocks they could, with the sole purpose as to bankrupt the railroads and trolley systems, and began methodically tearing them up. At one time there was a slow old trolley going up and down every other street in most cities ... Then there were none, as the tracks were torn out, and were paved over for passenger automobiles, taxis, trucks and bus's. Without major World War the only jobs were neatly dress salesmen in suits and ties, that had to dress accordingly in order to make sales, traveling the country by passenger train. The passenger railroads in a last ditch "Hail Mary" pass, would try to make passenger transportation more affordable, swift, streamlined and neat ... But this all failed miserably as the railroad and it's infrastructure began to rot, decay, crumble, and collapse. Without major World War to fuel the country, the civilized US society began to collapse into complete urban decay, hoodlums, organized crime, and drug addiction. Many of your once pristine "absolutely stunning" gleaming high speed passenger trains were discontinued, and entire rail lines were abandoned and scrapped. Society as a whole, began to further steadily decay into the human toilet bowl, as rock & roll swept the country ... later replaced by Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Rap ... etc ... etc ... People didn't need passenger trains as they had their music, drugs, alcohol, and nightlife. Schools began to decay and education collapsed, factories closed their doors forever, and the once "Fancy" dress code swirled, and chug chug chugged down the collapsing human society toilet drain.

So the answer to you question: "Why did classy American passenger trains die?"

We didn't need them anymore, as we are not really going anywhere anyway, and they were purposely sabotaged and criminally bankrupted by Eisenhower, Ford, GM, oil companies, and the modern likes

Bye Bye passenger trains, it was good to know you

Then you had draft dodgers, and dope addicts writing songs, plodding en mass, in lines, hitchhiking to Woodstock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF1lqEQFVUo

Ask the same question about Airline Travel or even Automobile travel. People used to go for "Sunday drives." No phones, iPads, etc. Mom made sandwiches to eat along the way. Now you buy a car based it's navigation, streaming, and audio capabilities

I laughed when a TV Show character said: "Drive-In Movie Theaters, is that where you actually pay to park your car in a big parking lot, and sit outside all night, and get all bit up by skeeters ... what a complete waste of gasoline" !

And then the American Dream died ... and then there were NO more Drive-In Movie Theaters !

Surely something much, much worser' is looming, very soon, on the horizion ... Which will absolutely shatter ones Trainz oriented immature Choo-Choo world, and make the measly passing away of "Classy" American passenger trains pale into insignificance.

You will learn how to get over the simple fact, and deal with it, that no more "Classy" passenger trains exist anymore in America :mop::'mop: And recognize that the entire world has gone totally to pot !

1611mac said:

Ask the same question about Airline Travel or even Automobile travel. People used to go for "Sunday drives." No phones, iPads, etc. Mom made sandwiches to eat along the way. Now you buy a car based it's navigation, streaming, and audio capabilities

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Lol...... Just bought a new car, totally baffled the sales rep when I said where's the off switch for all this tech, sat nav, streaming, bluetooth not required to be on all the time!....... Yes there was one!

Sunday drives? yes used to get that over here as well. My mobile is left at home unless I'm going any distance and then it gets switched off.

From November 1983 Railfan and Railroad Magazine - From the Publisher - some THIRTY years after the 50's.....

"One blessing occurred when I switched from the old 8mm format to Super 8 and later to Super 8 sound. Everything is now on 400 ft reels, a far cry from the old 200 and 300 foot reels which were pretty much standard back in simpler days. Not long ago I saw a Super 8 projector that used 1200 foot reels providing almost a 90 minute showing. ..... Silent film that has been lap-spliced will invariably jam in sound projectors designed for thinner butt-end tape splicing."

That's right you young ones..... film used to be edited with a razor blade and tape..... I remember as a young teen (13??) I received a Bell and Howell Super 8 camera and projector for Christmas.

1611mac said:

From November 1983 Railfan and Railroad Magazine - From the Publisher - some THIRTY years after the 50's.....

"One blessing occurred when I switched from the old 8mm format to Super 8 and later to Super 8 sound. Everything is now on 400 ft reels, a far cry from the old 200 and 300 foot reels which were pretty much standard back in simpler days. Not long ago I saw a Super 8 projector that used 1200 foot reels providing almost a 90 minute showing. ..... Silent film that has been lap-spliced will invariably jam in sound projectors designed for thinner butt-end tape splicing."

That's right you young ones..... film used to be edited with a razor blade and tape..... I remember as a young teen (13??) I received a Bell and Howell Super 8 camera and projector for Christmas.

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I thought they had video tape back in the 1980's. VHS. Sony BetaMax.

Nowadays, I edit a "movie" with Windows Movie Maker and a PC mouse!

butler57 said:

Classy people started to "fly"!

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Back in the 1970's, my father said that railroads wanted to get rid of passenger service altogether because all the profits were in freight.

This was when Amtrak was up and coming and everybody in my family condemned it for being unsafe even then. My father scorned Amtrak
for having to use tracks for freight which he thought were in poor repair. I rode Amtrak only once in my lifetime: round trip from Oakland to Denver in summer 1986.
The California Zephyr. The train was held up for five hours in SLC, UT due to a "train derailment" according to the conductor. The air-conditioned cars stunk of mold, the windows were dirty
and there were still smoking sections on the train then. The meals weren't horrible but not especially good. I travelled coach all the way and that was miserable. I did not want to pay more
for a private sleeping room. It was 36 to 41 miserable hours on the train without a bed to sleep in each way. I guess one could stopover for a cheap motel along the way but I did not think to ask
my travel agent if Amtrak allowed stopovers on coach round trip tickets.

You can get off a crappy Amtrak train at any station, and stay over in a crabby motel ... but when you go to get on the next crappy Amtrak train, you have to pay all over again, for a full fare ... it works just like a stinky bus ticket, sitting in a damp pee peed seat that an incontinent old lady last sat in.

I was pricing a train ticket to New Orleans ... it would have taken several days time, with bad food, and mice onboard running around. Passenger trains are done for in this day and age !

cascaderailroad said:

You can get off a crappy Amtrak train at any station, and stay over in a crabby motel ... but when you go to get on the next crappy Amtrak train, you have to pay all over again, for a full fare ... it works just like a stinky bus ticket, sitting in a damp pee pee seat that an incontinent old lady last sat in.

I was pricing a train ticket to New Orleans ... it would have taken several days time, with bad food, and mice onboard running around. Passenger trains are done for in this day and age !

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I don't even like commercial flying anymore. Being poked, patted and prodded by TSA jerks. No thanks. I prefer my car (or a rented truck) whenever having to travel (or move) but still have to put up with flea-bag Motel 6's as I'm not rich. Does Tom Bodett leave the lights on to chase the rats away for you or me? Amtrak or Greyhound might be OK for a trip 8 hours or less. Greyhound has always had polite and well-dressed bus drivers for me.

Amtrak passenger trains went from First Class, to Second Class, to Third Class, to Last Class, then finally to having NO Class at all

Getting back to the actual question, one of the final factors was loss of the mail contracts.

The railroads did go for the more profitable freight because freight doesn't need the extra care that passengers need. Really... Do crates of carrots really care if there are no comfy pillows and steak dinners? The airlines today are doing the same thing as they're cramming passengers into tiny seats and offering Snackables for meals at $7.50 each, charging to carry luggage, and randomly canceling flights.

In the 1950s, the railroads were not subsidized as they are today to carry passengers. They not only had to rely on the ever decreasing number of passengers, they also had to pay property taxes on the varnish, the ROW, and all their buildings while the new interstate highways and airlines were getting these taxes as subsidies and competing against the railroads.

Here in the northeast, the railroads were hit worse because of the large commuter fleets and extra equipment they needed to run. Due to the commuter service, the Boston and Maine Railroad looked very early on at DMUs, and ran some of the earliest doodlebugs and later Budd RDCs, aka "Budd Liners" on their routes. 1946 spelled the end for steam on the B&M as the first EMD FT trainset pulled through the Hoosac Tunnel without needing to hook up to a Class 5000 electric motor. Around this time, the B&M invested heavily in the new Budd Liners and replaced their steam engine hauled commuter passenger trains with Budd Liners, and E-units replaced the steam on the few long distance trains they ran.

It didn't help either that the railroads were being turned into profit centers like many business are run today by the stock holders instead of railroad management that know how to run a railroad. The New Haven and Boston & Maine, for example, were invaded by Patrick McGuiness who used slash and burn techniques to maximize profits over reliabiity, and in the process cut back on maintainence which further caused delays due to derailments and engine failures. He also cut routes, some major routes too and not just under utilized branch lines. He ended up going to jail after being caught selling a rather new mothballed Talgo trainset belonging to the B&M to a scrap dealer and putting the money in his pockets.

Sadly by 1962 the B&M and the New Haven were both bankrupt. This lead to further cuts in passenger service and more deffered maintainence. The B&M discontinued all long distance trains around 1970 and cut back its commuter routes to greater Boston. In the mid-1950s through the end of long distance service, the so-called long distance trains were Budd Liners anyway. The New Haven became a brief hunk of Penn Central and then Conrail. The B&M soldiered on and eventually became part of Guilford aka Pan Am Railways which has continued the same management style of the PC and McGuiness. Sadly this played out with other railroads all over including the killing off of the NYC, PRR, LV, Erie, etc. Conrail did us no favors either since they were basically the Penn Central with a government bailout and still had the same management and made other drastic cuts.

It didn't help either that the trucking companies were given favorable rates while the railroads were still stuck with their antiquated tariff system regulated by the ICC. After the Staggers Act, things have changed, but it's too little and too late. As the highways were built, the railroads lost their once profitable freight business. Lines were ripped up further, and as we know once a line is gone it's gone forever. Today some regions are looking back at the railroads not from a nostalgic point of view, but from necessity due to horrific traffic caused by inadequate transportation. What was once a great luxurious service has become a utility, and utilities don't come with luxurious services.

I have often thought that American rail enthusiasts have been unfortunately worse off than we British folk regarding railways and the passenger side of things. With the great decline of passenger rail across the pond in due time this has had an effect on train simulator enthusiasts. One side of the Atlantic freight trains are the big thing like here on Trainz and the other side where I am passenger rail is the paramount thing. Many years ago I did two holidays in America based on one city but when I travelled by train the thing that caught my eye in places was where I seen a formerly big station but platforms that were defunct and long derelict.

Even allowing for the times of the almost infamous Beeching who was organised by the government to drastically cut poor service usage we still have relative to out country size a heavily used passenger system and wide too. The thing that made me groan about the politicians involvement during being run by the government was that the opposition in parliament expressed their annoyance at closures but when they got into power did nothing! The income re freight in America I sussed was the important thing and when the last company to give up passengers happened that was sad. Somewhere in my house I have a really think official US handbook from the 1950's given to me years ago and it had to be thick listing all the rail companies both large and small. Included Canada which surprised me, Mexico and with a smile, Cuba!

Feel you unfortunate folk over there have lost much on non-freight rail and I am at least glad that here rail travel is a widely used system. Indeed here in the northern part of the kingdom over the Border we have had defunct passenger routes brought back! So Trainz fans replicate the big difference between Brits and Americans on freight and passenger builds!

ps. We have a series of regular tv programmes on railways just to make you envious (!).