U.S. train travel around the 1860s
December 17, 2014 1:19 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for descriptions of mid-19th-century passenger rail trips. I prefer contemporary accounts, and particularly of travel in the South. I can also use later research, and descriptions of travel anywhere in the country are helpful.

In the South, of course, many accounts include accommodations for war damage (e.g., we had to detrain to cross a bridge on foot). But I'm looking for ordinary experiences as well. I need a better feel for what it was like, in order to furnish accurate backdrops for a fictional piece.
posted by LonnieK to Travel & Transportation around United States (6 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
This Google Books search ("rail journey," limited to 19th century) has a lot to choose from. If you tweak the search terms you'll come up with more.

(Keep in mind that the transcontinental railway wasn't finished until 1869, but maybe that falls into your mid-19th-century category?)
posted by mudpuppie at 1:55 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Though it's classified as children's lit, Laura Ingalls Wilder's vivid description of the train journey in By the Shores of Silver Lake is a wonderful account of 19th century train travel -- from the depot, to the food they buy, to the luxurious appointments of the train cars, to the terrifying exhilaration of its noisy, bumpy speed...
Also, there are kids-eye accounts of the railroad being built through the west -- the men working the railroads, the whole culture of westward expansion described in sensory detail, with an implicit hint of sorrow about what is being destroyed.
The train journey is towards the beginning of the novel, check it out.
posted by third rail at 2:43 PM on December 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a pianist from New Orleans who had studied in Paris, traveled North and South America by train in the 1850-60s.
Here are some excerpts (search the site for "train"). See also Gottschalk Notes of a pianist, Jeanne Behrend ed., New York: Da capo 1979, with many passages from his diaries.
posted by Namlit at 2:45 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was also coming in to mention Laura Ingalls Wilder's account of the train journey in By The Shores of Silver Lake.
posted by Sara C. at 5:00 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not the South, but - from an Australian paper Bell's Life in Sydney in 1869, reprinted from something called Land and Water:
BUFFALO HUNTING BY RAIL.—EXCITING SCENE.
posted by XMLicious at 6:05 PM on December 17, 2014


There are some good descriptions, including Mark Twain's at:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/tcrr-twain/
posted by nickggully at 8:06 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


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