Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[HudsonHawk]

All I've ever had is a wooden ironing board. I didn't realize there was any other kind. And it does double duty as a cutting table, too!

I still have a wooden ironing board because Mrs Hawk insists on it. My only gripe is it's really heavy. And short. It's not adjustable like the new fangled metal ones.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Has this been mentioned before? Items related to the railroads. A few:

* cabooses behind freight trains;
* abandoned but still standing small town train depots;
* freight cars lettered for "fallen flag" (lines no longer operating under their old name) railroad companies;
* five man freight train crews;
* semaphore block signals and train order boards;
*active railroad telegraph lines;
* pre- Amtrak (1971) passenger trains;
* parlor cars.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Has this been mentioned before? Items related to the railroads. A few:
* abandoned but still standing small town train depots;

If there's not already, there should be a thread for posting pictures of these.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The old Maine Central RR station in my home town. Abandoned in the 1950s, moved from its original site in the 1990s and turned into a take-out roadside ice cream shack.

 

[Fading Fast]

The old Maine Central RR station in my home town. Abandoned in the 1950s, moved from its original site in the 1990s and turned into a take-out roadside ice cream shack.

Were railroads already cutting service / lines in the '50s in Maine?

 

[ChiTownScion]

Everyone has their Happy Place as a kid, I'm sure. This was mine. The Chicago, Aurora and Elgin was an electric interurban that abruptly halted passenger service on July 3, 1957... leaving many commuters stranded without a ride home. Wayne, Illinois, was the venue of what my family called, "the whistle stop." By the time I started visiting it, the trains were long gone... but I was never quite certain that the electricity on the third rail had been shut off. Place is now a memory.. although the old right of way is a bike path.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Were railroads already cutting service / lines in the '50s in Maine?

Yep -- by the end of the '50s if you wanted to catch a train in Maine you had to take the Greyhound bus to Portland. Passenger service ended here in Rockland in 1959, and the train station was turned into City Hall. (Which abandoned it thirty years later. It's now a hipster restaurant called "Trackside.")

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ Thank you. I know I've read more than once that passenger railroads were and are almost always a money loosing business other than on short high-density lines like in the Washington to Boston corridor. And even then, they aren't big money makers. And this was even back in the heyday of passenger rail service. Apparently, many companies did it to augment their freight business, as a lower margin business or even slight loser (although, mail service turned some into profitable businesses).

Hence, I guess it isn't a surprise that so many lower-density lines got shut down. But I wonder, if the rail road itself was already built, was it really not profitable to run it since the big sunk cost of building all the miles was done? This can quickly dissolve into the old argument of (and over) how much do we subsidize roads, and airports versus railroad, etc., to see what is the true cost of each.

Any who - just rambling a bit as it always make me sad that we had all this rail infrastructure (and all the inter-urban rail infrastructure) that we let go to seed.

 

[52Styleline]

The Morton, WA RR station was built in 1910. Passenger service (From Tacoma) stopped right after WWII but it continued as a freight and log hauling line into the 70's. Eventually, the town bought the building and moved it (The move was an episode of the TV show Movers) to one end of town.

Lots of money was spent and the town had hopes of making the old station a tourist attraction. But because it was a timber town, when the timber economy fell apart the downtown died and is now mostly a collection of empty buildings.

 

[BobHufford]

This was ours. It sat empty after passenger service ended on the Frisco, but the city tore it down one weekend in the early 1970s for no particular reason.

1970:

1947:

 

[ChiTownScion]

This was ours. It sat empty after passenger service ended on the Frisco, but the city torn it down one weekend in the early 1970s for no particular reason.

1970:

1947:

St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad ("Frisco")? I know that Springfield was a major division point on that line.

 

[BobHufford]

St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad ("Frisco")? I know that Springfield was a major division point on that line.

Yup ... that's the one. At least the old office building has a new life.

 

[ChiTownScion]

^^^ Thank you. I know I've read more than once that passenger railroads were and are almost always a money loosing business other than on short high-density lines like in the Washington to Boston corridor. And even then, they aren't big money makers. And this was even back in the heyday of passenger rail service. Apparently, many companies did it to augment their freight business, as a lower margin business or even slight loser (although, mail service turned some into profitable businesses).

Hence, I guess it isn't a surprise that so many lower-density lines got shut down. But I wonder, if the rail road itself was already built, was it really not profitable to run it since the big sunk cost of building all the miles was done? This can quickly dissolve into the old argument of (and over) how much do we subsidize roads, and airports versus railroad, etc., to see what is the true cost of each.

Any who - just rambling a bit as it always make me sad that we had all this rail infrastructure (and all the inter-urban rail infrastructure) that we let go to seed.

Essentially, three major developments in the 50's and 60's killed the passenger trains in the US.

1. Development of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway network.

2. Emergence of jet aircraft allowing lower priced travel by air (and of course, federal, state, and local funding of airport facilities).

3. Ending government mail contracts for both Railway Post Office and sealed mail shipment services. This was what enabled a lot of secondary, "maid of all work " trains to run, the trains that the common folk who couldn't afford the extra fare premium to ride, say, the Broadway Limited or the Super Chief, would ride. These were also the trains that would stop at the smaller towns that the big named flagship trains flew by. And they were, in the days when the Pullman Car Co. operated sleeping cars on such trains, in many ways the more interesting trains to ride.

Of course, the breakup of the Pullman monopoly in the 1940's was a factor as well. At one time Pullman built the cars and operated the cars as well: you'd buy a railroad ticket and a ticket from Pullman for your sleeping or parlor car accommodation as well. That ended in a 1944 court case brought by the Budd Car Company: by 1948, Pullman was selling the cars to the railroads, then leasing them back for operation. By the late 50's those heavyweight Pullman sleepers- many featuring the old open sections that you see in era films, were pretty shopworn.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Just as an aside: 2 weeks ago we travelled on Amtrak's Empire Builder, Seattle to Chicago (well, we got off in Glenview, a suburb). Got the bedroom-- the one with the en suite shower and essentially a bunk bed for 2. Slept well, had a nice NY Strip steak both nights, and was totally awed by the scenery of the Puget Sound, Cascade Mountains, and the Rockies through Glacier Park. AND we arrived on time. Modern train travel isn't what most of us want to remember from "the good old days," but to be fair, this was a supurb experience.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just as an aside: 2 weeks ago we travelled on Amtrak's Empire Builder, Seattle to Chicago (well, we got off in Glenview, a suburb). Got the bedroom-- the one with the en suite shower and essentially a bunk bed for 2. Slept well, had a nice NY Strip steak both nights, and was totally awed by the scenery of the Puget Sound, Cascade Mountains, and the Rockies through Glacier Park. AND we arrived on time. Modern train travel isn't what most of us want to remember from "the good old days," but to be fair, this was a supurb experience.

Great info in this post and your above post. I remember that mail service was one of the keys to profitability / survivability for passenger travel.

In a democracy, I guess we get what the majority want - and the majority wants car and plane travel. That must be why we heavily subsidize roads and airports but begrudge railroads even the very modest subsidies they get.

My Amtrak experiences have been mixed. Overall okay and some very good, but a not insignificant number of problems - very late trains with no explanation, unkept trains (truly dirty and broken, I'm not complaining because they weren't spit shined). That said, plane travel is no joy either. IMHO, Amtrak has different problems than air travel, but one isn't better than the other.

 

[ChiTownScion]

My Amtrak experiences have been mixed. Overall okay and some very good, but a not insignificant number of problems - very late trains with no explanation, unkept trains (truly dirty and broken, I'm not complaining because they weren't spit shined). That said, plane travel is no joy either. IMHO, Amtrak has different problems than air travel, but one isn't better than the other.

Thing to remember is that Amtrak was essentially set up to fail. By 1971, the powers that be believed that passenger trains would die because no one wanted to ride them, and the initial Amtrak labor pool (old timers from the railroads essentially waiting it out to railroad retirement) really didn't give a damn.

And then we had the 1973 oil embargo, and Amtrak was flooded with passengers.

The equipment in those early days of Amtrak was a hodgepodge of hand me downs from the railroads. Once Amtrak got its own equipment- mainly, head end power cars not relying upon steam heat lines- things improved. A lot of the younger people who went to work for Amtrak really believed in train travel, and still do. But, as with any industry, there are the gold bricks and pay rollers who could not care less: to them it's a job, nothing more. I've experienced both. And I usually can tell right away who is who.

I generally tip my car attendant quite well, and up front, when I travel first class. Accordingly, I tend to get great service... and if I don't I let the attendant know in short order. I don't ask for much: have my bed ready by 9PM, and make it up by 9AM, that sort of thing. And- although meals are included- I always tip the wait-staff: they work damned hard and when my meal is brought hot, fresh, and my beverages are refreshed, I appreciate it.

Air travel is, to me, routine. Taking the train is an event for which I plan months in advance.

 

[GHT]

In the 60's we had something similar here in the UK. About eleven thousand miles of track got ripped up and stations were closed down, wholesale. At the time it was argued that although the trains were costly to run, it might be prudent to retain the track beds for about fifty years. If only, nowadays you pay through the nose for your rail ticket and then you stand for the entire length of your journey. There's simply not enough trains, not enough track and our small Island can't take much more major road construction. No wonder rail travel is often referred to, as cattle class.

 

[DJH]

The station in the town where I was born (Bradfield in Essex) closed the same year I came along (1956), although I don't think the two events were related.

We often travelled on that line over the years and for quite a long time the old station building was in use as a private house. No idea if that is still the case.

Cheers!
David!

 

[52Styleline]

How about a whole town. B&W photo is my logging camp home town back in the 50's. In the 70's Tacoma City Light built a dam that flooded the whole valley. The color shot is of the approximate same place many years later when the lake level fell extremely low.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a lot of talk here about bringing back rail service into Boston via a connection to the Brunswick-to-Portland run -- we have an active freight line here that runs to and from the cement factory, and about fifteen years ago they refurbed the tracks for a summertime excursion service to Brunswick. They had a ratty hodgepodge of old Amtrak cars, but there seemed to be enough interest in a Boston connection to seriously talk about doing it -- and then last year the contract ran out and the state took a higher bid from a big Canadian company that refused to continue passenger operations rather than awarding a renewal to the small-time operator that had put so much work and effort into it. There were obvious suspicions of collusion and chicanery and payoffs afoot, but whatever the story was, the passenger operation is now completely defunct.

Which is a pain because I would have enjoyed being able to take the train into Boston, given how much I absolutely despise driving there.