The sod house frontier so much a part of Great Plains mythology—quickly came and went. Here emigrants from a dozen places stepped off the cars and into a new life. Salisbury, North Carolina, was linked to the nationwide system by the Southern Railway. Here a company man checked in freight, handed up orders to an engine crew, and presided over the telegraph key and sounder. This question would take a book to answer in depth. Pullman porter E. D. Nixon helped plan the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955–56. It might have been the age of the iron horse and the iron road, but the Great Plains West was also a world in search of wood. In 1896, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision declared racial segregation legal. Postal Department employees handled mail aboard trains. To ensure accuracy, watches were inspected regularly by jewelers on contract to the railroad.Use to lubricate bearing surfaces of machines.At major junctions, where many tracks came together from different routes, a tower operator controlled the trains in shifting from track to track.
Railroad lines crisscrossed the country.
Markets need information and the depot was “information central.” Just as the natural world of northern forests became lumber for sale, western nature was transformed to become bread and meat for eastern markets. They carried people, manufactured goods, food, the daily mail, and express package.
opening up a great new artery of traffic, and bringing in its train joy and gladness for thousands of our people.” Joy and gladness were invisible emotions, but Cox assured his Seward County friends that a new railroad was “building up three new villages along the way, and infusing new life and activity into a fourth, and adding new life to the city.” Cox was sure that the earth itself would be touched by Emerson’s magic rod.No single building was more important in that railroad establishment than the depot. In the 1990s, rails carried more commercial freight more miles than waterways or trucks.Transportation issues remained at the forefront of the movement when it entered the next stage: making sure that the new laws were being applied.
The car includes a Railway Post Office, where mail clerks sorted letters and small packages for delivery to towns along the route. Ready-made clothing, farm implements, seeds for new crops, pianos, books, and the entire stock for hardware stores, mercantiles, and millineries came by rail, entering western life on the platform.