Traveling Tuesday: The History of Train Travel

Traveling Tuesday: 

The History of Train Travel

I love trains! While growing up I visited the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore on countless occasions with my paternal grandfather, and he was a wealth of knowledge. Over the years, I’ve taken numerous trips on scenic railroads with varying levels of luxury – from hard wooden seats and tiny windows to padded reclining seats with glass, domed roofs. I never tire of the clickety-clack as we zoom along the tracks.

Did you know that railways go back as early as the mid-1500s? I was stunned by that fact. Known as wagonways or tramway, they featured wooden rails and were horse-drawn. Steam engines were introduced in England during the mid-1750s and a few years later, plates of cast iron were affixed to the top of the wooden rails. Cast iron is brittle, so it was replaced by wrought iron, then steel. By the nineteen century further improvements were made to the steel and became the standard. (According to author/historian Murat Ozyuksel, the expansion of the railroad industry is one of the main reasons for the success of the steel industry.)

Railroads came to the US in the 1820s and played a large role in the Industrial Revolution. Wealthy

men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, Jay Gould, Edward Harriman, and Leland Stanford were among the first to see the possibilities and invest in this new mode of transportation making them even wealthier.

Unfortunately, the American Civil War halted progression of the transcontinental railway, and it would not be completed until 1869. The Panic of 1873 and the subsequent depression stalled growth for several years, but the industry rebounded, and tracks soon crisscrossed the nation carrying goods, immigrants, and travels by the hundreds of thousands.

Initially, there were three classes of travel:

• First class offered upholstered seats, carpet, and curtains, with lots of space between seats. The décor used velvet, brass, and glass to convey luxury. Further luxury was available by purchasing seating in a Pullman sleeper or palace car. Some of the exceptionally rich, purchased a Pullman car and had it attached to the back of whatever train on which they were traveling.
• Second class also had upholstered seats, but they were not as nice, and the cars held more passengers.
• Third class, also known as emigrant class, had wooden benches and passengers were expected to bring their own food.

World War II saw a boom in railroad traffic with troop and hospital transports as well as good and war matériel. Afterwards many railroads were driven out of business with the advent of airlines, the increase in cars, and interstate highways. A rise in the trucking industry also impacted the railroads. Nowadays, passengers may choose first class or economy. According to Wikipedia, the US has approximately 160,000 miles of track and has the largest rail transport network in the world.

Have you ridden on a train?

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The American WWII Home Front in 29 Objects

Unlike Europe the American mainland escaped physical devastation during World War II as it was not subjected to full-scale invasions. However, that didn’t mean the United States wasn’t impacted by the war. The ramifications of large economic, cultural, and societal changes forced Americans to reconsider entrenched beliefs and traditions.

Artifacts collected from across the nation tell the stories of the American people whose lives were shaped by this second “war to end all wars,” World War II.

Pre-launch page (Be sure to click notify me on launch): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindashentonmatchett/the-world-war-ii-home-front-in-29-objects-illustrated-book

Photo Credits:

Locomotive on Bridge: Pixabay

Cornelius Vanderbilt: Courtesy Vanderbilt University

Hospital Car: Courtesy Gold Coast Railroad Museum

Traveling Tuesday: Wyoming in the 1870s

Traveling Tuesday: Wyoming in the 1870s

By the time Wyoming attained statehood in 1890, the population was over sixty thousand, however, when my character Beryl shows up in 1875, there were a mere nine thousand inhabitants in an area larger than the United Kingdom where she’d come from. The transcontinental railroad had been completed six years earlier, and the Union Pacific portion of the line cut through the southern section of the territory on its way to California, creating many towns along the route.

However, prior to that Wyoming owed much of its early settlement to the “gentlemen of Europe.” A fondness for beaver top hats created an industry that sent fur trappers such as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and Jedediah Smith into the Rocky Mountains in search of the prized pelts. After the Homestead Act of 1862, the number of people entering the area swelled, seeing a peak in immigration in 1868. Wyoming Territory was officially created on July 25th of that year. Four years later, Yellowstone National Park became the world’s first national park.

By the time Beryl arrived, the cattle industry boom and the era of the cowboy were in full swing.

Pixabay/
B Snuffleupagus

Demand for beef had grown on both sides of the Atlantic, and the invention of refrigerated rail cars and ships supported the growth. Territorial governors invested, and one of the most powerful political organizations in the West at that time, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, had been founded four years earlier. More than one resource called the WSGA “the de facto territorial government” in Wyoming.

Being from England herself, Beryl might have noticed that the population was heavily foreign-born, one site claiming as much as three-eighths of the inhabitants. Most came from Ireland, Germany, and England. Unlike Colorado, Wyoming never experienced any major mineral discoveries such as gold or silver. However, there were many places to hide, and the territory was home to more than a few outlaw gangs. The nickname “wild west” became popular for a reason, and Beryl was soon caught up in one of its nefarious plots.

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Beryl’s Bounty Hunter

Can a thief and a lawman find happiness?

Orphaned as a child, Beryl Atherton has lived on the streets of London as long as she can remember. Reduced to stealing for survival, she is arrested. During her incarceration one of her cellmates shows her a newspaper ad for an American mail-order bride agency. But all is not as it seems, and moments after landing in Boston, she must run for her life. Will things be no different for her in the New World?

Working as a bounty hunter since The War Between the States, Lucas Wolf just needs a few more cases before he can hang up his gun, purchase a ranch out West, and apply for a mail-order bride from the Westward Home & Hearts Mail-Order Bride Agency. While staking out the docks in Boston, he sees a woman fleeing from the man he’s been tailing. Saving her risks his job. Not saving her risks his heart.

Pre-order Link: https://amzn.to/3KqprHW

Traveling Tuesday: Westward Expansion

Traveling Tuesday: Westward Expansion

American Progress, 1872
by John Gast

The move into the American West began around 1810, about seven years after President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. Nearly doubling the size of the United States, the area stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans. Jefferson keenly believed that the health of the republic depended on the independence of its citizens, and that land ownership was a key to that independence. He wrote, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.”

By 1840, almost forty percent of the U.S. population (about seven million people), lived in the trans-Appalachian West. Using the trail blazed by Lewis and Clark, these people sold most of their worldly goods to purchase a wagon, a pair of oxen, and enough food (hopefully) to get them across the country. Most were searching for economic opportunity, but many were looking for adventure.

Americans weren’t the only people to trek the trails. Europeans came in droves, and the reasons are as

Courtesy National Geographic

numerous as the people themselves. Like the Americans, some hoped to earn a living. Others fled religious or political persecution. Still more were escaping starvation (such as when the Irish came between 1845 to 1849 because of The Great Famine). The California Gold Rush and subsequent Alaskan Gold Rush also brought thousands of people.

In 1845, journalist John O’Sullivan espoused that westward migration was “Americans’ manifest destiny to carry the great experiment of liberty to the edge of the continent: to overspread and to possess the whole of the [land] which Providence has given us.” He may have coined the phrase, but it was a belief long held within the U.S.

The Preemption Act of 1841, The Donation Land Act of 1850, and the Homestead Act of 1862 enticed spurts of mass immigration. There were two wagon-based transportation networks, one starting in Missouri, the other in the Mexican province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. Known as the Emigrant Trails, the Oregon, Mormon, and California trails began in Missouri, and historians have estimated that at least a half-million people traversed these three trails between 1843 and 1869 (the height of expansion). The Gila Trail, Sante Fe Trail, and Old Spanish Trail were the “southern routes.”

No matter what trail was used, the journey was arduous and slow and fraught with dangers. Infectious diseases, dehydration, malnutrition, injury, and inclement weather caused the deaths of as many as one in ten travelers. Most settlers paid to be led by a wagon master who was in charge of a large party or “train” of up to several hundred wagons. Some of these masters wrote trail guides or memoirs, and it wasn’t until 1859, the government published The Prairie Traveler, written by Capt. Randolph Marcy who'd spent most of his career in the American West.

Competition among the territories was fierce, and some offered “incentives” to lure settlers, such as Wyoming which was the first state to give women the right to vote. Once the journey was complete, the danger wasn’t necessarily over, but immigrants built “soddies,” homes made of dirt and grass, then set about carving a living out of the plentiful and fertile land of the West.

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Dinah's Dilemma

Will she have to run from the past for the rest of her life?

Dinah Simpkins has no chance of making a good marriage. Her outlaw brothers and her father’s gambling addiction have ruined the family’s reputation. Then the Westward Home and Hearts Matrimonial Agency provides an opportunity for a fresh start. After Dinah arrives in Nebraska, she discovers her brothers played a part in the death of her prospective groom’s first wife.

As a former Pinkerton detective Nathan Childs knows when someone is lying. The bride sent by the matrimonial agency may be beautiful, but she’s definitely hiding something, and he has no intention of marrying her until he uncovers the truth. But an easier solution may be to send her packing. Then his young daughter goes missing. He and Dinah must put aside their mutual hurt and mistrust to find her.

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3TrdXqc