The rust through has not affected the structural integrity of the cab roof yet. The cab roof now not only leaks but has started to rust through in places. In the 1990s, railsĬarried more commercial freight more miles than waterways or trucks.Lets say you have a steam locomotive with a metal cab (including the roof) that has been sitting outside for the past 60 years. But railroads rebounded economically, due to growth in rail shipment of freight containers, automobiles, coal, grain, food, and other products. In the 1980s and 1990s, passenger trains were no longer a part of most travelers’ lives. This drop in traffic and the fact that diesels needed far fewer people to maintain them combined to cut rail employment. All steam locomotives on the Southern were retired by 1953, and Spencer Shops, not easily convertible to diesel work, closed in 1960.īy 1950, rail traffic was dropping steadily, motivating rail managers to cut costs. Steam locomotive 1401 was last repaired at Spencer in 1951. Steam and diesel locomotives ran side by side for a brief time in the 1940s and early 1950s, but new diesel locomotives took over as they radically cut maintenanceĪnd operating expenses. In the 1940s, diesel locomotives began to be introduced on U.S. But after the war, as Americans embraced cars, trucks, and highways, the role of railroads changed. They employed between 1.5 and 2 million people annually-about 10 percent of all industrial workers-and transported hundreds of billions McBrideīefore World War II, railroads were an integral part of peoples’ lives and one of the nation’s premier businesses. The South Connected to the Nationĭiesel locomotive (right) brings the Southern Railway’s Tennessean passenger train into Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1947 Photograph by Harry A. New automobiles all came into Salisbury by railroad. Coal for factory furnaces and home heating, bales of cotton for the mills, machinery, hardware, dry goods for stores, food products for groceries, mail, express packages, and And a large tireĬompany opened to support the growing number of automobiles on the road. A local druggist who invented a headache powder became a big manufacturer because he could distribute his product nationally by rail. Laundries, bakeries, soft-drink bottlers, dairies, and retail shops contributed to the economy. Salisbury’s other businesses produced lumber, building stone, flour, cottonseed oil, furniture, mattresses, candy, and turpentine. Salisbury and surrounding Rowan County were home to 15 textile mills employing more than 1,700 people. Salisbury, in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, was the commercial center of a large agricultural area dominatedīy cotton. A Way of TravelĬommunities in the 1920s relied on trains for transporting goods. But their efforts pressured the federal government to make states comply with desegregationīecause of these kinds of protests over transportation, laws and social customs began to change throughout the segregated South. The Freedom Riders were attacked as they traveled, and one of their buses was burned in Alabama. The South to see if bus stations were desegregated as ordered. In 1961, integrated groups of activists calling themselves Freedom Riders boarded buses and traveled into Transportation issues remained at the forefront of the movement when it entered the next stage: making sure that the new laws were being applied. Other forms of protest against institutionalized racism. The Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955-56 showed the power of nonviolent direct action and encouraged Mass protests against segregated transportation helped create the modern civil rights movement. Reversed Plessy, the doctrine of “separate but equal” was the law of the land.Īfter 1954, segregation remained a common practice. For the next half century, until 1954’s Brown v. Ferguson decision declared racial segregation legal. Transportation has long been a flash point in the struggle for racial equality in America.
Bus at Anniston, Alabama, 1961 Courtesy of United Press International
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