In the late forties, my father had to get to Rochester Clinic in Minnesota for a check up from Upper Michigan. He took the train even thou there was bus service with a more direct route. In those days, he could walk three blocks (we drove him) to the Mineral Range depot were he got on the Milwaukee Road to Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Road most likely brought him to Minnesota City where he transferee to the Great Western and then into Rochester. He had a sleeper Birth, Dining Car service and the option to walk through the train to get the exercise he liked. We all know the bus could not provide compfort and service like the train. The kind of "Bus" on the billboard may have been in service about that time and do you notice how everyone is squashed together. Some say the General Motors lobbied against the railroads to get highways built to run their motor coaches. It's also the car and airplane that dealt the final blow to rail transportation. Personally, I prefer to ride the train for long distance trips except I have to drive seventy to one hundred miles to board one. In those earlier days, I would only have to drive a couple miles to catch the Santa Fe to anywhere I wanted to go. Would Americans ever go back to taking the train over using automobiles? Of course not as I'm one of the odd balls that dreams of the past and know it will never be that way again. Those were the "Good Old Days" that we'll never see again. |
