“Junior patently doesn’t want to go. The porter has begun in advance to hate his passengers, and the woman on the steps is getting ready to file complaints before the train moves out of the depot.”

The quote above is from the caption to this photograph in The Trains We Rode, vol. 1, Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg, 1965 (from my personal library). I like the photo as much for the authors’ interpretation of it as for the photo itself. We tend to romanticize trains of the past, but to truly get the feel of them we have to remember that the aggravations and discontents of travel were a part of the experience then as much as now.

The poster below is also reproduced from Beebe & Clegg.