(The Association of American Railroads issued the following news release on November 18.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Museum of American History is preparing to unveil its largest exhibition ever, highlighting the many ways transportation shaped and changed America in the 19th and 20th centuries. During a press conference on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Department of Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta drove a spike into a simulated rail to underscore the importance of railroads in building America.
Today’s railroads remain a vital force in our nation’s economy, using computers, wireless communications systems and centralized dispatching to move more of America’s goods and products than any other mode of transportation. By partnering with the trucking industry, rail intermodal service has become the industry’s fastest growing line of business. A single rail intermodal train can carry the equivalent of 280 trucks, easing traffic congestion and pollution by taking trucks off the highway.
The Association of American Railroads is a proud sponsor of the exhibition, which allows visitors the opportunity to travel back in time and experience transportation as it shaped American lives and landscapes. Featuring 19 different sections and organized chronologically, the show explores how a small California town – and the nation – grows and prospers when a railroad comes to town, the role of the automobile in creating suburban communities, and how containerized shipping transformed a U.S port into a global marketplace. The exhibition opens on Saturday, Nov. 22.
Some of the largest and most spectacular sections of the exhibition involve America’s railroads. The exhibit opens with the 1876 “Jupiter” locomotive, restored to its original condition and set in the town of Santa Cruz, California. The setting is designed to immerse visitors in the atmosphere of hope that Santa Cruz experiences when it became part of the rail network.
An article from the May 13, 1876 edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel conveys the excitement – “At last our enterprising young city is in full connection with the rest of mankind and at last she is free from the rule of the sleepy stagecoach.”
At the other end of the rail line was Watsonville, California, where the introduction of the railroad and the refrigerated boxcar allowed a relatively small town to become an industrialized agricultural center. The exhibition features a boxcar and farmwagon, showing how the agricultural goods were transported from the field to the dinner table.
“Railroad companies laid more than 100,000 miles of new track between 1870 and 1890,” reads one exhibition panel. “Along with the development of refrigerated cars, the network helped create a growing market for fruit and other produce. By the 1880’s, Armour, Swift and other meat packing companies shipped refrigerated beef around the country. Fruits and vegetables became more widely available. Strawberries from Tennessee, Georgia peaches, Florida oranges, and a cornucopia of produce from California poured into Midwestern and eastern cities, feeding America’s expanding population.”
The largest section of the exhibit is dominated by the green, 199-ton, 92-foot-long “1401” locomotive, located outside a replica of the Salisbury, NC rail depot and set in 1927. Visitors will be able to see how the railroads shaped the lives of 1.7 million railroad workers and the economies of towns serviced by the railroads in the 1920s. Towns like Salisbury and nearby Spencer, North Carolina, flourished with the addition of more than 2,500 railway machinists, foundry workers, boilermakers and carpenters working on the Southern Railway.
“Salisbury, North Carolina, was linked to the nationwide system by the Southern Railway,” reads an exhibit label. “Its main route ran between Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, Louisiana by way of Salisbury. The depot and the rail freight sheds made the city part of the country’s rail network. The railroad also provided job opportunity in the community. In nearby Spencer, the vast locomotive repair shops employed 2,500 skilled workers.” Alongside the locomotive, the exhibit highlights the different types of jobs offered by the railroad.
“In the 1920s, railroads were an essential part of American life,” reads the main panel in the railroad depot. “Railroads crisscrossed the country. They carried people, manufactured goods, food, the daily mail and express packages.”
Included in the Salisbury, NC portion of the exhibit is a hands-on section that allows visitors to see first hand how vital railroads were to the creation and success of the mail order catalog business, with a display that gives visitors the opportunity to order a shipment and follow it to its destination.
“The Chicago firms of Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were mail order giants,” notes the exhibit. “Through their catalogs, retail marketing became truly national, reaching customers in tiny rural communities as well as in cities. The catalogs included almost everything imaginable, from a toy to a plow to a dress to an entire house in kit form. Delivery was by mail or by the Railway Express Agency. In either case, the product came by train.”
In the final area of the exhibit, entitled “Going Global,” visitors are treated to multi-media presentation centered on the Port of Los Angeles and today’s intermodal, global transportation network.
The National Museum of American History is located at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington D.C. and is open daily, except December 25, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit the museum’s website at www.amercianhistory.si.edu/onthemove or call 202-357-2700.