t has been most interesting to discover that slow trains have thousands of other admirers who, for reasons which defy analysis, likewise seem devoted to their welfare. This point should be clearly understood: We do not ride them, or write about them, to make fun of their obsolete equipment and generally old-fashioned ways. The hobby has much in common with other nostalgic pursuits such as collecting trivets or doing over old farmhouses. Yet there is a considerable difference, too.

Any operating railroad, however small, is a living thing and not a curio. Its financial and personal roots go deep into local history and pride. It is almost true that the smaller the railroad, the more important it seems as an institution. Sentiment and dollars and cents get all scrambled up in a most delightful way, and it is for the spiritual qualities which they represent that many small, obsolete trains are passionately defended when their abandonment is proposed. Perhaps the sense of the community is so precious to us that any institution which symbolizes it takes on a value greater than the Interstate Commerce Commission will allow.

Archie Robertson /
Slow Train to Yesterday / 1943

n the beginning all railroads were short lines. Most early charters were issues for railroads that magnitude of the 17-mile Mohawk & Hudson and the 26-mile Boston & Lowell. Few companies had the ambition of the Baltimore & Ohio: Baltimore to the Ohio River, which turned out to be nearly 400 miles, once they built it and measured it. Most of the early railroads soon combined with their neighbors to form longer railroads. Some short lines remained in existence for a variety of reasons: the owners were making sufficient return on their investment; shippers and passengers were content with local control; if the short line connected with only one large road, the large road was assured of the short line's business: the short line wasn't sufficiently profitable to attract the notice of a larger road.

The dominant trend, though, was for merger and growth, and that trend continued from the beginning of the railroad era in the United States through the 1960s - sometimes faster, sometimes slower, at first to meet competition from other railroads, later to meet competition from other modes of transportation. In 1970 the situation was altered suddenly and drastically.

Edward A. Lewis /
American Shortline Railway Guide

he surviving short-line railroads, which are of more than sentimental interest to their hundreds of thousands of employees and bondholders and to the twelve thousand small towns located on their tracks, have their own organization, the Short Line Association. Nearly two hundred are too poor to pay the modest dues which would make them members; their average length has been estimated at twenty-five miles and the average age of their engines at twenty-five years. Their standard definition is a railroad which is short in mileage, or in revenues, or in both. They also have their own song, sung at a Short Line Association Convention:

We're just as wide,
Though not so long,
And that is why
We sing this song.
Happy day, Happy day,
When dividends
We all will pay.

Archie Robertson /
Slow Train to Yesterday / 1943

Archie Robertson / Slow Train to Yesterday / 1943

he steam railroads of the storied and humble South were, like the land, in variance. Bridging distance were such carriers as the Southern Railway itself. Those of scant mileage were typified by North Carolina's 3-mile Cliffside Railroad. Both painted some of their locomotives green. Like the Southern, the Cliffside often ran indifferent to speed; but that was because Cliffside had no place to go. There were, too, Dixie railroads whose motive power was not so lavishly painted — and sometimes was not painted at all, getting along as best it could with numberless tenders and rusted appurtenances.

Inventiveness came second nature to men who operated neglected locomotives. Nearly all of the South's railroaders shared alike in the meeting of life and job with honesty. They worked hard and frequently long. They knew what it was to laugh with themselves, at themselves, and at their locomotives. Laughter proved a satisfying emotion. The men spent lifetimes on the railroad enjoying it. Most of these railroaders worked unheralded. They lived on hayseed farms and in hick towns, but no matter. It was home. It was a home with ham and chicken in the center of the table and a blessing on the side. The head of the family, were he a trainman, may have missed full schooling, but he usually made up for it with ingenuity and geniality. He was, to those around him, as much a hero as one of the South's greatest — Casey Jones. The people would hear of Illinois Central's Casey, but they knew the unfabled man who rode the tracks beside their homesteads.

Every one of these men was a part of the United States.
More important to Southerners, he was a part of us.

H. Reid / Extra South: An Unscheduled, Unhurried Look at Dixie Steam Railroading / 1964

photo of George Miller / Mississippi & Skuna Valley / 1970 / JCH