London Trams c.1950s

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High Line in the past

The High Line is a 1-mile (1.6 km) New York City park built on a 1.45-mile (2.33 km) section of the former elevated freight railroad spur called the West Side Line, which runs along the lower west side of Manhattan; it has been redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway. The High Line Park currently runs from Gansevoort Street, one block below West 12th Street, in the Meatpacking District, up to 30th Street, through the neighborhood of Chelsea to the West Side Yard, near the Javits Convention Center.

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Kiss and say Goodbye

General Motors Aerotrain: A Rider's Report

The photos above are of General Motors' Aerotrain, a mid-1950s attempt to put pizazz into rail travel and sell many similar locomotive-and-coaches combinations to America's ailing passenger railroads.

Basically, the Aerotrain was a flashy, automobile-styled locomotive pulling a string of coaches using some of the body stampings from inter-city buses GM was building at the time. By the way, that automobile reference is more real than one might think: the guy behind the design was Chuck Jordan, who many years later went on to head GM's styling operations.

Early American Streamlined Locomotives (more)

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Early American Streamlined Locomotives

Pre-streamliner passenger train in Alamama - 1948

Locomotive No. 1, a Norman Bel Geddes design - 1931

Union Pacific M-10000 (left) and Burlington Pioneer Zephyr

The M-10000 is open for inspection in Denver - 1934

M-10000 and Chrysler Airflow - 1934

Full-length photo of the Zephyr - 1935

The Interurban Station

The Interurban Railroad provided passenger service between Port Washington and Milwaukee for over 40 years.  The station on Center Street became the Colonial Photography Studio after service was discontinued and functioned as such until recently.

The Interurban ran along the western edge of Cedarburg until 1948. The first major subdivision, Westlawn, was built in the field to the right in 1953 and 1954.

The Interurban provided a popular method of traveling to and from Milwaukee. Trains composed of one, two or three cars were used, depending upon the number of passengers expected. Even so, some riders occasionally had to stand, as shown in this photograph taken on one of the train’s last trips before service was discontinued on March 31, 1948.

Train wreck at Montparnasse, 1895