Relive the Age of Rail at the Shelburne Museum

 

 

All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955

Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education

Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont

Through October 20, 2024

 

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to jump on a train and go anywhere in the United States you wanted? Take a look at this map from the late 1890s and you’ll see a spidery steel web that could have made your dream come true. 

 

Then

 

 

Now look at the map of what we have today. What happened? In a word, the automobile. Once Americans fell in love with the private automobile, railroads started to get ripped up. The building of interstate highways from 1956 on was the final blow that reduced the once-robust rail network of yore to today’s 80-pound weakling Amtrak system. 

 

 

Now

 

An exhibit at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum takes us back to the days in which rail was king. Lest you think automobile travel is superior, consider that in 1880 it took about 3 ½ days to get from New York to the West Coast by train. It still does, Amtrak jokes aside. If you drive and you actually stop to eat, see things, and sleep, it takes 5-6 days.

 

The railroad did as much if not more to knit the nation together as the Civil War. Think of living in the hinterlands in say, North Williston, Vermont, the Catskills of New York, some lonely outpost in the middle of nowhere, or the vast Texas plains and seeing a puff of steam in the distance. Even if you weren’t waiting to board, it reminded you there was a larger world to explore beyond your little slice of it. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it; the artists included in All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art have done it for you. 

Charles Heyde Steam in North Williston VT 1850

Thomas Cole River in the Catskills 1843

Charles Bowling Church at the Crossroads 1936

Georgia O'Keeffe Train Coming in Canyon, TX 1916

 

Artists have also captured the urban experience, the tunnels, bridges, fire-breathing factories, and the crush of patrons. Rail lines also advanced communications–telegraph lines frequently paralleled the rails–as well as American industry. In the latter case, they railroads were also a site for capital-labor conflict such as the Great Uprising of 1877, a significant nationwide general strike. It’s no coincidence that so many strikes took place among railroad workers. Theirs was hard work and the stress demands on engineers  were such that their jobs invaded their dreams.

 

Edward Hopper, Train Approaching a Tunnel

 

John Sloan, Six O'Clock

Otto Kohler ,Steel Valley Pittsburgh

 

Aaron Bohroad, Slag Heaps 1938

Joe Jones, All the Live Long Day

William Robinson Leigh, Attempt to Fire the PA RR Pittsburgh Roundhouse 1877

Thomas Hart Benton, Engineer's Dream 1931

 Railroads also spelled the end of the world known by Great Plains Indians, their counter-offensive notwithstanding. To this day historians debate the degree to which the railroad was a form of creative chaos or an instrument of genocide insofar as Native Americans were concerned. 

 

Henry Farny, Morning of a New Day 1907

 

In the end, urban Americans shaped the future, though Henry Ford literally paved the way to a post-rail society. Still, the railroad holds a romantic attachment in the minds of millions. Thoughts of train travel induces nostalgia and yearning in ways other forms transport seldom do. People still gawk inside Grand Central Station, but who lingers in the family garage or gets excited abut hanging out at an airport? 

Samuel Johnson Woolf, Under World 1910

 

You should see All Aboard if you can. After you have, walk down the hill to Shelburne Museum’s exhibit on Shelburne Station. Walk inside and imagine being a telegraph operator or sitting on a wooden bench with your luggage awaiting the train. It’s hard not to feel awe at the pistons and big wheels. 

 

 

Rob Weir