C O L U M B I A
LIBRARY

C O L U M X S
 

The Vanishing Art of Railway Travel

For many of our readers' children, a long, scenic trip by railway
is almost an unknown c-\pcricnce. They are travelers by air, to
whom the earth is a remote, patchwork lawn on which human
movement is antlike or invisible. Or, they travel by car—a low-
slung, claustrophobic rocket from which theit eyes, 39 inches
above the asphalt, catch fleeting bluts of field, tree and house. Not
for them are the sights which thrilled the March children in Niagara
Revisited, as described by Clara Kirk in the article which begins
on page 5: the glimpse from the train of "a small shanty," where
they saw a cat, a coffee-pot on the stove, and an old woman standing
outside to see the ttain go by. (Naturally no one stands and watches
cars whiz past on a thruway.)

Mrs. Kirk describes these experiences in the second part of her
article; in the first part she tells the story—and how it ended in
fiasco—of Niagara Revisited. This was W. D. Hov\'ells' effort to
promote, via the adventutcs of the March family, the beauties of a
railroad journey to Niagara—"by the Hoosac Tunnel Route."

The theme is continued in Ptofessor Williams's survey of the
railway material in the Columbia Libraries, and in Messrs. Finch
and Hamlin's introduction to the Parsons Transportation Prints.
The facing illustration, from a print in that collection, depicts an
express train carrying its passengers across the continent. We
dedicate this issue to all long-distance train passengers, who are
beginning to vanish faster than the buffaloes and Indians they once
delighted to observe.
 

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