Riding on Trains

In the 1940s it was all about train travel and that's the way my Mom and I made our way about the South west. We clambered up the steps of the hissing beast at Omaha with a white jacketed Conductor standing by to lend a hand if necessary. Mom would find our seats and we would settle ourselves for the journey. Soon, we'd hear the Conductor call out "All Aboooaard," and I experienced a little shiver of excitement as, with a great deal of clatter and hissing, the wheels started turning, slowly at first then gathering momentum until we were rocketing through the vast farmlands and prairies of the Midwest. I remember playing a game of what if..what if I lived there... in that white farm house under the shade of those big trees... what if that bay horse in the field was mine and I could ride it every day....what if I lived in that little house so close to the railroad track that I could wave to the train passing by every day..

We were usually in a Pullman car. That meant while we sat in the dining car at a table resplendent with white tablecloths and napkins, selecting from a full menu, the porter would be busy making our seats into sleeping berths.

Changed into our pajamas, we would crawl into the berths, snuggle down and sink into sleep in the swaying car as the clickity-clack of the wheels sang a rhythmic lullaby.

This is the Santa Fe Super Chief. We got to ride on this train to Albuquerque. New Mexico.

Do yuh hear that whistle down the line?

I figure that it's engine number forty nine,

She's the only one that'll sound that way.

On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.

See the ol' smoke risin' 'round the bend,

I reckon that she knows she's gonna meet a friend,

Folks around these parts get the time o' day

From the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.

Here she comes! Ooh, ooh, ooh,

Hey, Jim, yuh better git the rig!

Ooh, ooh, ooh,

She's got a list o' passengers that's pretty big

And they'll all want lifts to Brown's Hotel,'

Cause lots o' them been travelin' for quite a spell,

All the way from Philadelphiay,

the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.

From the 1946 Movie, The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland

This picture of a train crossing Canyon Diablo northeast of Superior, AZ is south of Prescott, so I'm sure we never traveled across it, but I was taken with the shot.

We did cross Johnson's canyon southwest of Williams, Arizona to get to Prescott were we disembarked at this train depot. This photo was taken around 1934, and we arrived in 1947, but it looked much the same and did until the railroad eliminated Prescott as a stop in the 1960s. The old depot still stands as part of a shopping center.

We walked a couple of blocks up Cortez Street to check in at the Head Hotel. This photo was taken a long time before we stayed there as a promotion for the hotel when it was new, but it didn't look much different in the forties, and doesn't look much different today.