Why Americans REALLY Stopped Taking the Train

In 1947, Americans rode intercity trains about 280 miles for every man, woman and child in the country. Today it's about 19. Ask why, and you'll hear that the interstate highways killed the train, or the airlines, or General Motors, or the railroads themselves. The government counted every passenger-mile, year after year, and when you line those answers up against its numbers, most of them come too late. This documentary follows the everyday passenger: the small-town depot where the agent ran the telegraph and the mail sack hung by the track, the coach and the Pullman berth, the dining car, the Railway Post Office, and the Black porters and passengers who kept the trains running and fought their segregation. Then it tests every popular explanation against the dates: the car (the 1920s), the wartime boom and the tax that outlived it, the airliner (the 1950s), the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, the railroads' "loss on the books", the deliberately downgraded trains, the Post Office pulling the mail in 1967, the General Motors streetcar story, and May 1, 1971. Did your town have a train? When did the last one stop? Tell us the town and the year in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 The 5:05 to College 1:14 Every Town Had a Train 5:12 The First Leak: The Car 7:14 The Last Great Crowd 9:25 The Sleeper Flies 12:42 A Loss on the Books 15:12 The Mail Train 17:10 What About General Motors? 18:16 May 1, 1971 20:01 The Depot Per-person figures are our arithmetic: intercity (non-commuter) rail passenger-miles divided by the U.S. population. Archive photos: Library of Congress (FSA/OWI: Jack Delano, Russell Lee, John Collier, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn; HABS), U.S. National Archives (EPA DOCUMERICA; Office of Defense Transportation poster). Music: original score. #History #AmericanHistory #Trains