Very exciting back in the day! Pack your steamer trunk and go on an adventure. It's a Red Letter Day!
Train travel
Early travel posters. Tap / click on image for full screen
The CPR offered colonist (immigrant), second-class and first-class travel on its trains. CPR-built berths were larger than existing Pullman berths. Sleeping "accommodation" was priced at an additional $20 over and above the cost of first class "transportation" for a trip between Montreal and Vancouver. Additionally, about 1900 a new lower-cost tourist-class sleeper was introduced at less than half price and also available with second-class tickets.
On the Art of Having Something to Eat1888 dining car Versailles, parlour car and first class coach interiors.1921 W series dining car interior
So successful was the advertising that it less than ten years business had gone from nothing to 1.8 million passengers in 1886 and 3 million in 1894. First class rolling stock increased from forty-seven sleeping and dining cars in the beginning to ninety-nine in 1894. By 1899 a second train, the Imperial Limited was added during summer time. The schedule reduced cross-country travel by a day and a half, from 136 hours to 100 ½.
Traffic continued to grow, from 4.3 million passengers in 1901 with a roster of 115 first-class sleeping and dining cars to nearly 400 cars and 15.5 million passengers in 1912.
CPR poster Worlds Fair in Chicago 1893
1890's travel brochure Old Time Trains Archives
Travel brochure depicting River series Solarium Lounge Sleeper.
River Rouge Solarium Lounge car as restored at Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, Cranbrook, BC.
Wow! Vita Glass Solariums. Whatever that is, sure sounds great!
Early 'Dome Car' .. let's call it an observation car.
Observation "dome" car 517 shown at Glacier House in 1903. Beatrice Longstaff Lance
And now lets do the world !
Tell me something about the "Daisy Express" touted in that World's Fair poster.
Can't say much more than it was one of three named 'all vestibuled trains' that ran daily except Sunday for two of them to the Chicago Worlds Fair. Each train had its own departure time and a unique name. The Columbia Express and the Daisy Express must be special Trains for the Fair only while the Chicago Flyer was a regular scheduled train I believe.
Definitely the Daisy Express has a very unusual name and I do not know what it denotes. Perhaps an appeal to the ladies with its accompanying fresh flowers, upholstered seating instead of a smoke filled cigar chomping heavy leather business type atmosphere.
And don't forget the Vita Glass Solarium with its abundance of Vitamin D for the lily white ladies of the chattering class.
Searches so far have turned up babysitting services, car rentals, and an auction featuring that poster adverstising the Fair.
Maybe cars like this ... no spitoons but lots of Daisy's.
Those wonderful posters, and the world they conjure up!
Makes me wish I had a time machine just so I could go back for a brief visit.
Yes, I know there's some sourpusses who'll say "It wasn't great back then! THIS sucked and THAT sucked and EVERYTHING ELSE sucked and blah, blah blah."
Give it a rest! It wasn't all bad, not by a damn sight!
MiningmanWow! Vita Glass Solariums. Whatever that is, sure sounds great!
It's a special glass that passes UV radiation (whereas normal soda-lime glass doesn't) developed in the mid-Twenties. Unfortunately its original proponents made claims for the 'healthfulness of sunlight' in excess of what was actually deliverable -- including general claims that growth was enhanced by increased exposure to UV and that exposure to sunlight was good for TB and, yes, the common cold. There was a craze for 'solariums' in general around this time that apparently was based on 'water-cure'-style sanitoriums like those of Bernhard and Rollier at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Just as radium was a carefully-kept French product, this glass was an 'exclusive British product' at least into the late '20s; you see a great and curious coyness to discuss the exact composition of the stuff. Note that fused silica (quartz) also passes UV (it's used in sunlamp arc capsules in this period) but would be prohibitively expensive in these show-window-size sheets.
A bit of contemporary cold water (a year earlier, in 1928) thrown on the use of this glass in applications like observation cars ... where people aren't likely to be exposing 'enough' skin for adequate D3 synthesis there...
The difficulties in the path of the user of any specially permeable glass are many: the niggardly supply of ultra-violet radiation in winter, when, if necessary, it is most needed; the inevitable loss in transmission through the glass; the practical necessity for frequent cleaning; the importance of exposure to directly transmitted sunshine; the need for casting off clothing; and the prime cost-all make a strangely sad story for those of us whose hopes of a new preventive technique were high.
Of course we now know that indiscriminate UV is not a good thing, just as x-radiation as a skin treatment or thorium salts in a patent medicine aren't. We also laugh knowingly when we read that many years later, fallout from atmospheric testing was happily measured for the American public in "sunshine units". But in a kinder, gentler time, the "Vita Glass" was at the cutting edge of medical wonder.
Nothing wrong with a good dose of sunshine from time to time. You look better, you feel better, helps to ward off depression as well.
But like everything else, "Too much of a good thing is bad!" Anything.
Except steam locomotives.
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