[music]
Yes, the train kept on rolling
All night long
Ye, the train kept on rolling
All night long
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway with MHP from WNYC and PRX in collaboration with GBH News in Boston. All aboard the Takeaway train, it's time for the final installment of our mini-series on how trains built America.
Now, in the first episode, we heard stories of train laborers from those who laid the tracks to those who keep the trains running today. In our second episode, we heard about how trains were and are prominent sites in America's long struggle for racial justice. Now, if you haven't heard those, head on over to our podcast feed after the show today and get up to speed. Throughout the week, we've also been hearing from you about how trains have affected your lives.
Nora: This is Nora from Denver, Colorado, and my parents used to put us on the train from Denver to Chicago every summer, the California Zephyr fabulous experience.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Today we've got just a few more stops to explore before we pull this Takeaway train into the station. It's time to hear about just a few of the many ways that trains have affected pretty much every aspect of modern life, our food, our music, our religious practices, even our sense of time and space.
- Roger Grant: The railroads invented time zones.
Melissa Harris-Perry: That's right, time zones. Before we had four standardized time zones, people just ran on God's time or the sun's time, but for a transcontinental industry, hauling tons of humans and freight on crisscrossing tracks, not knowing exactly when a train would be where well that could be disastrous. In 1883, major railroads got together and decided they were going to get their time straight. [chuckles] It happened all at once. On the day of two noons. Here's H. Roger Grant, the Kathyrn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of history at Clemson University.
- Roger Grant: The big day occurred on Sunday, November the 18th, 1883, and approximately 600 railroad companies abandoned the 53 arbitrary times and this resulted in the formation of four time zones. Probably virtually every clock had to be adjusted, maybe not by more than three or four or five minutes, but I have no idea how many clocks. If you have, let's say between 75,000 and 80,000 railroad stations, you're talking lots of clocks. That's the day of two noons.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Once the railroads had a grip on time, they could really start building many of the industries that you and I still interact with today. In fact, almost every day. Here's John Hankey, former curator of the Baltimore Ohio Railroad Museum.
John Hankey: Elvis Sears a railroad-stationed telegrapher, got a shipment of watches that didn't get claimed. He sold them to other railroads up and down the line. That was the basic origin of Sears and Roebuck as a Chicago department store. Imagine anywhere in the country being able to order from Sears in Chicago by telegraph and have the stuff picked, packed, and shipped by rail in sometimes less than a day. It was the amazon.com of the 19th century.
Melissa Harris-Perry: It wasn't just our interior decorating taste that railroads helped cultivate, it was our literal taste too. Here's Rudy Garbely, Director of the Dining Car Society and President of Garbely Publishing Company.
Rudy Garbely: If you could step on a train in New York City and that railroad was serving the dishes that New York City had popularized, like say a Waldorf salad, and you could step off a train in Chicago and look at that same dish on the same train in Chicago, while suddenly restaurants in Chicago are serving Waldorf salads. The Union Pacifics dining cars actually had recipes for Lo mein that even in Chicago probably would not have been a well-known or well-accepted dish at the time, 1930s, 1940s, but was extremely popular in California.
Some of that kind of cuisine made it's way east because you could order it leaving California, but you could also order it as you're going through Nebraska on your way to Chicago on the same train. That's one of the reasons that Chinese cuisine made its way across the country.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Have you ever wondered why most bread loaves you buy in the supermarket are square-shaped? Let's trains. The Pullman Company developed square loaves as a way to easily bake, stack, and store mass quantities of bread in the confined spaces on train cars. While these Pullman loaves weren't the best thing since sliced bread, they were the direct predecessor. Now it's easy to see how a national shipping network could change the goods and services Americans could access. Railroad not only helped feed American bellies, they helped feed our souls. Here's Bob Leinberger, Associate Editor of Trains Magazine, who we met back in Episode 1.
Bob Leinberger: Some of the larger organized faiths in our country, the Catholics, the Baptists, the Episcopalians seized on the idea. Let's take a railroad car and turn it into a church and we can bring this to a town that is just setting down roots. We can park it on a siding for a few months until we can build a proper church, put a minister or a priest on the car, and this is their church. There were a number of chapel cars that roam mainly through the western part of the US and in a lot of these up-and-coming emerging towns. That was the first church. If you can imagine [chuckles] the Victorian times, some of these, Melissa were fabulous stained glass, ornate woodwork.
There was at least one that I know of that still exists that has its original pump organ in it. It had a pump organ.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As trains chugged across the country, the very rhythm of their movements inspired creatives from directors to musicians, to painters, to poets. Here's Professor Roger Grant again.
- Roger Grant: The first real movie was a great train robbery in 1903, we have these classic movies like, The Great Locomotive Chase, comes to mind, the famous Disney film in the mid-1950s or North by Northwest, the famous Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint film from 1959.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Here's Professor Miriam Thaggert of the University of Buffalo from Episode 2.
Miriam Thaggert: I think the train appears, it resonates with so many different aspects of not just American culture, but African American culture specifically. The train, of course, is really important for African American poetry. Just think about the poetry of, say, Langston Hughes or Sterling Brown. The rhythm, the sense of the chug, the chug and lug of that railroad sound. We could hear it in the poems of Sterling Brown and Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes:
I am fed up
With Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel
And afraid,
Who lynch and run,
Who are scared of me
And me of them.
I pick up my life
And take it away
On a one-way ticket—
Gone up North,
Gone out West,
Gone!
Melissa Harris-Perry: Professor Manu Karuka of Barnard College, who we met in the first episode.
Manu Karuka: If we think of the blues, the rhythms of different blues that could be actually directly associated with the rhythms of different train lines, the sounds of the whistles which were modified or transposed into the form of melodies.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Why do we still love trains so much? We're hearing from you next. Don't disembark the Takeaway train yet.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back aboard the Takeaway train. I'm your engineer, Melissa Harris-Perry. Why do we love trains so much? What is it about them that's captivated the American imagination for centuries? Here's Jared Johnson, Executive Director of Transit Matters.
Jared Johnson: I think the places that we love, by and large, were facilitated by a train. We often think of America as a highway country where the car represents freedom. I think folks don't realize that at one point Point America had a rail network that was the envy of the world. You could reach any town of any significance on a train or on an interurban trolley. Some of the neighborhoods that are springing back to life, some of the small towns with these beautiful quaint main streets, these were only enabled because of the train
Melissa Harris-Perry: Professor Jeff Shirkey at SUNY Empire State offered his take.
Jeff Shirkey: You can have a sense of community and adventure on the train with lots of people together on a long journey. There's also the sense of how time and space are condensed by the trains. It connects us all in unique way that again, I think is different from air travel because as you just-- On a plane you just fly over everything but on the train you can actually, you're there and then you make stops along the way.
Melissa Harris-Perry: For many, there's something about trains that's deeply connected to our sense of self, both as a country and as individuals. For some of you, they're part of your family history.
Speaker 13: We chugged from Chardon County, Virginia, my dad was on the railroad. The skills that he learned in World War II navy helped him land a really-- A nice job on the most major railroad on the East Coast, New York, Miami, and back. I was thoroughly enthralled with the railroad since I was born. My children, my spouse, everybody's got involved along the way. I've even ridden on historic trains and met people on the trains, had a date on the trains, [chuckles] It just goes on and on.
Hannah Clark: Hi, this is Hannah Clark from Denver, Colorado. My father was a lifelong train enthusiast. Growing up in a small town I think they were something exciting whenever they rolled through and connected him to the outside world. What was next? In 2019, he died of lymphoma and something surprising he loved watching in the hospital was live feeds of train crossings, and he found it so calming and we would always come in and ask any good trains today, and he'd talk about the ones that he'd seen rolling by. I like to think that it reminded him of that connection to something bigger. What's next?
Melissa Harris-Perry: For others, trains are very much part of your daily life.
Anne Zeta: My name is Anne Zeta and I'm calling from Fort Worth, Texas. I work with trains, I ride trains, and I love trains. In Fort Worth, we have TEXRail which we got our train to the airport during the time that I served on the Fort Worth City Council, so I was instrumental in helping bring that to fruition. Even when I get stopped by freight trains, crossing roadways when I'm driving, I stop and watch them and they do not annoy me because I just love trains so much.
Ryan: Hi, my name is Ryan from Denver. I drive a commuter train. A little weird being at the forefront of a lot of issues you see in the media with increasing prices, homelessness, crime, but it's a lot of fun. It's really nice to see people use the service we provide.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Those trains bring excitement and adventure.
Paul: Hey, this is Paul from Playa del Ray, California. Last year I took my kids on the trains from LA to San Francisco to Moab, stopping at Green River to Denver, Chicago, Santa Fe, and then back to LA Union Station. It was an amazing 12-day trip with several overnights on the trains and we just love it.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Plenty of y'all just love trains because well, they're pretty cool.
Miles: Hi, my name is Miles and I am into trains. I love to record trains, ride trains, watch trains. I've [unintelligible 00:12:29] myself. I love trains. Train is my biggest hobby.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks to all of you who shared your train stories and your train love with us, and thanks for coming on this special journey over the past week.
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