A Nightmarish Journey on the Rails
A Seattle traveler describes the brutal conditions of the railway transit, where passengers were forced to endure freezing temperatures and indifference from company staff.
Fred T. Palmer, manager of the Wadham and Waddell company, who left Seattle with his brother two years ago for Ottawa, returned to Seattle Monday evening. He described a harrowing experience crossing the plains. He boarded a train and, because the car was unheated, he purchased a pair of blankets and a bed from the company’s agent just as the train started, and on arriving, his blankets were soaked with steam and water, and he had no place to sleep. A brakeman picked his pockets and stitched a tear in the car window with the threat of $5. When the traveler complained to the conductor, no attention was paid to the matter.
“A brakeman picked the pockets and stitched a tear in the car window with the threat of $5.”
This account captures the chaotic and often abusive nature of late 19th-century rail travel, a sharp contrast to the modern push for public transit expansion. It highlights how, then as now, the quality of infrastructure and the treatment of passengers remain central to the civic experience of transport.
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