News on the Train

[CSumption]

In the 1930s, how would breaking news be received by people on board trains? Would they get it only at stops along the way? Or was it possible to receive telegrams?

[wjstix]

If you mean national news, by the 1930's it was common for trains to have a radio in a lounge car or observation car so they could get info that way. It wasn't uncommon for guys (usually teenagers but sometimes grown-ups) to get on a train as a "news butcher" selling newspapers and perhaps candy and gum. Sometimes they would ride the train for a few stops, then get off and ride another train back to where they started. This would normally only be on a lower-class train, not a top of the line one.

A few trains did have set-ups to receive radio telegrams but it was pretty rare - I think the 20th Century Ltd. had such a provision?? Telegrams would normally be sent to the station ahead of the train, or to a nearby telegraph office. My father worked for Postal Telegraph in Galesburg, IL in the late 1930's, I remember him talking about getting a telegram meant for Phil Harris and Alice Faye, who were on the Super Chief heading for Hollywood. He raced down to the ATSF station but didn't quite catch them so had to relay the message ahead to the next stop.

[CSumption]

Thanks. I hadn't realized that there would have been a radio on board. Any idea where I could find a photo or drawing of what it would have looked like?

[wanswheel]

1922 NY Times article about the DL&W Cornell Special.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A00EED81639EF3ABC4E53DFB2668389639EDE

 

 

 

[Phoebe Vet]

 

http://www.everythingradio.com/Marconi%20Tower.htm 

 

[CSumption]

In the late 1930s, would train passengers listening to the radio in the lounge car still be using headphones? Or could the radio be heard through the speakers?

[daveklepper]

Lounge car radios were generally stock console high-quality standard home radios, which at the time could be bought for either ac or dc power, since many cities and towns still had dc power distribution.   Some had table models, but that was rare, since the floor console models had larger loudspeakers, better adapted to overcoming background noise.   Listening was just like your current stereo.   The big breakthrough in loudspeaker design came in the early 1920-s when RCA and Western-Electric-Bell Labs working as cooperating rivals brought sound motion pictures to reality. and scientifically designed loudspeakers were the first breakthrough, even before sound on film was developed, and that breakthrough was rapidly adapted by the radio industry.    Improvement in loudspeaker performance since then has only been incremental, not revolutionary.

[wanswheel]

1914 article, Getting the Wireless on Board Train (DL&W)

http://earlyradiohistory.us/1914trn.htm

[wanswheel]

Interesting article about Canadian National Railways radio department

http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/index3.php?url=http%3A//www.broadcasting-history.ca/networks/networks_CNRexp.html

Picture of radio-equipped car St. Peter

http://www.imagescn.technomuses.ca/comm_comp/index_view.cfm?photoid=51920608&id=92

Picture of passengers listening to radio on the Maple Leaf

http://www.imagescn.technomuses.ca/comm_comp/index_view.cfm?photoid=7714974&id=92

[erikem]

daveklepper

The big breakthrough in loudspeaker design came in the early 1920-s when RCA and Western-Electric-Bell Labs working as cooperating rivals brought sound motion pictures to reality. and scientifically designed loudspeakers were the first breakthrough, even before sound on film was developed, and that breakthrough was rapidly adapted by the radio industry.    Improvement in loudspeaker performance since then has only been incremental, not revolutionary.

I believe you are referring to the invention of the "dynamic" (moving coil) loudspeaker by Rice and Kellogg in 1926. A 1966 issue of Popular Electronics had an article on the 40th anniversary of that invention.

There were enough radio stations around by the mid-1930's that many rail lines would have had complete ground wave coverage - necessary for daytime reception.

- Erik

[daveklepper]

YES

The next step came in the '30's with the development of Alnico magnets which replaced field coils and allowed more efficient loudspeakers with wider frequency responses to be constructed.  But even before that, the idea of crossover networks and having specialized high frequenc and low frequency loudspeakers came about and was typical motion picture theatres and then in the highest quality console radios and combination radio-phonographs.   Today there are even better magnet materials.   Also condenser-capacitor loudspeaker were almost simultaneous with dynamic loudspeakers, but were rejected for a long time because of inefficiency.   Economical larger power amlifiers led to a first resurraction, Art Janszen and KLH, and Art's son is successfully marketing a state-of-art system today, but very expensive with dedicated amplifiers.

[henry6]

But, too, the radio as described above was a Parlor Car, extra fare luxury.  The real overall answer for the general populace was picking up newspapers enroute; train crews and entraining passengers bringing aboard hearsay and first hand reports.  Telegraph kept ahead of the train, of course, so if urgent the crew could pick up something important along the way; later commercial radios (and later still television) at stations (not necessarily legal under safety rules) would make news availabile.  And the transistor/portable radios came along for virtually everyone to have. 

April 1967.  I was riding from Philadelphia to Springfield, MA.  The news of Martin Luther King, Jr. was passed around the New Haven train by the train crew as we neared Bridgeport, CT.  They heard it from all different sources, mainly radio reports passed on to them by passengers and other railroaders.  And that was 1967!  Instant must be in touch communications of today makes this story seem strange to many.

[wjstix]

Some railroads had wire, and later tape, recorded music that could be played in areas where there was no radio reception.

[henry6]

The Sarnoff-Marconi-DL&W tower in Binghamton still stands adjacent to the railroad station on Lewis Street with appropriate plaque and historical designation.  WWI came up so quick that the proof of being able to use voice transmission from land base to moving vehicle was quickly adapted by the US Governement Naval services thus ending the railroad experiment.