Nostalgia & History > Railfan Trespassers!

Railfans are shown trespassing to get a shot of the westbound DL&W Lackawanna Limited, train No. 3, at a grade crossing just east of Binghamton, N.Y., in 1915. The gent on the fence is Gerald Best, who old-timers will recall as not only a prolific photographer, but also an author and publisher of railroad materials

So apparently railfans have been trespassing to get their shots for at least 99 years. The gent standing in the middle of what must have been a busy eastbound main track is really taking a chance.

(Confession: 45 years after this photo was taken, and 44 years ago, I trespassed at the same grade crossing to get the second shot of an eastbound EL freight.)

Art House
Gettysburg, Pa.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/14 09:39 by aehouse.

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The real crime is wearing a suit on an excursion or while railfanning.

Bob

bnsfbob Wrote:
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> The real crime is wearing a suit on an excursion
> or while railfanning.
>
> Bob


Suits remained in style for railfanning (at least on excursions), until after World War II.

bnsfbob Wrote:
> The real crime is wearing a suit...

What a cool shot! Many thanks for posting some American history from a wardrobe viewpoint as well as the standard RR nostalgia. I never cease to be amazed when I see old Baseball highlights from as late as the 1950's. It seems like EVERYBODY in the stands wore suits & ties & fedoras and the ladies ALL wore dresses & caps. It's hysterical to us now, but that was just the way it was back in the 'days of yore'. A slice of American pie, indeed...

Lance

Up north, maybe. Down south in the summer before air conditioning became common, if suits were de rigueur in the daytime, they were likely to be linen or silk or cotton (e.g. seersucker) unless the occasion was very formal - and perhaps even then.

santafe199 Wrote:
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> bnsfbob Wrote:
> > The real crime is wearing a suit...
>
> What a cool shot! Many thanks for posting some
> American history from a wardrobe viewpoint as well
> as the standard RR nostalgia. I never cease to be
> amazed when I see old Baseball highlights from as
> late as the 1950's. It seems like EVERYBODY in the
> stands wore suits & ties & fedoras and the ladies
> ALL wore dresses & caps. It's hysterical to us
> now, but that was just the way it was back in the
> 'days of yore'. A slice of American pie,
> indeed...
>
> Lance

On board the 20th Century Limited in 1963 (an environment where everyone was "properly" dressed), I saw a young woman in the observation car wearing a business suit. Later that evening, in the diner, she now appeared in a semi-formal evening dress.

Those were the days.

Art House



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/14 11:31 by aehouse.

It really jars me when I see interiors of restored luxury passenger equipment with the passengers "dressed" in shorts, T's and flip flops.

John Bromley
Omaha, Nebraska

Neat post Art, and love that second shot composition too.

Chico

aehouse Wrote:
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> Suits remained in style for railfanning (at least
> on excursions), until after World War II.

This is, interestingly, and east-vs-west thing in America. For most of the history of the US, NYC regarded itself as the cultural center of the universe, and this self-assuredness led to everyone else wanting to be 'cool' (in modern terminology) by aping what the people in NYC wore and did. Hats and coats made a lot of sense in NYC in winter to keep from getting your ears and suchlike frozen off. They made sense in London (which is even farther north), and that is where the style came from. They didn't make much sense in Washington DC in August (tens of thousands used to pass out and even die from heat prostration every summer) but since NYC didn't have quite that that problem, suits and hats remained in vogue.

The combination of WW II (specifically the War in the Pacific) and Hollywood movies changed all that.

Hundreds of thousands of men went to the south pacific, and promptly discovered that you had to work in a tee shirt and shorts in 100+ degree heat at 90+ % humidity. When they came back from four years of this, many of them found the idea of wearing a suit all day, every day, to be somewhat questionable.

Added to that, and even more important, was Hollywood movies. Shot in So Cal, where it was always warm and sunny, suits made no more sense than in the south pacific. Up though WW II movies still showed everyone wearing suits, and many of the movies were nominally set in Chicago or NYC. After WW II we get the Bob Hope - Bing Crosby "road" movies, where they see lots of other places, and are as like as not wearing Hawaiian shirts and no tie. Hollywood, and then LA and SF started flexing their muscles as being just a entitled to be the cultural center of America as NYC claimed to be. As time went on, helped immensely by the Hollywood publicity machine, everyone wanted to live in LA and be a movie star. Suits and hats started going away.

At the current point in time the only thing that NYC still makes claim to is being the Architecture center of the world, and all the books on architecture are published there. They are VERY snotty about any building not designed by a member of the NYC Architect's Guild, which is an inbred group of people off in a fantasy land, designing some of the ugliest and least functional buildings in the world.

Copy19 Wrote:
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> It really jars me when I see interiors of restored
> luxury passenger equipment with the passengers
> "dressed" in shorts, T's and flip flops.
>
> John Bromley
> Omaha, Nebraska

People dress for comfort, not to impress. You can't judge a person by what he or she wears. I judge a person for how they treat me, how they treat people that can do nothing for them.

If you don't believe people dress to impress, you have never walked past a young girl's clothing store in the mall and looked inside. The entire sales pitch is based on impressing your peers. And it works.

We've come a long way from "puttin' on my top hat....." to " blew out my flip flop...." and I'm not entirely sure it's all been for the better.

Art:

Nice pair of photos. If you don't mind my asking, how did you determine that the two photos were taken from the same grade crossing. I didn't see any common elements in the photo.

I would hardly call the second photo trespassing, at least not on the railroad. It looks like a public road and behind the limit line at the crossing. Perhaps a bit unsafe if standing in the road.

Cliff

I was previously typically dressed more formally for work until I was at a Saturday morning public workshop where one of my superiors demanded I remove my tie!

That said, I lament the decline in standards of dress among many members of our society. While many who dress up can be jerks and others who dress in jeans and T-shirts can be saints, there is something to be said for looking decent when traveling by bus, plane or train. The elegance of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint added major class to the Twentieth Century Limited scenes in "North By Northwest."

A number of years ago, when Amtrak was still running the Broadway Limited, I dressed up in a suit and tie for a westbound trip to Harrisburg because it was The Broadway Limited. Much to my disappointment, I was the only coach patron dressed up, so I ceased doing that on subsequent trips.

I would very much welcome a Fall, Winter or early Spring excursion which had a dress code.

Is it a crime, or a bit of "civility"?
In the early 1980's at the "Rocket 150" anniversary in
Rainhill, England, I was told by my English host that
"No jeans! You WILL wear nice slacks, nice shirt, and
YOU WILL wear a coat and tie".



bnsfbob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The real crime is wearing a suit on an excursion
> or while railfanning.
>
> Bob

RuleG Wrote:
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> Art:
>
> Nice pair of photos. If you don't mind my asking,
> how did you determine that the two photos were
> taken from the same grade crossing. I didn't see
> any common elements in the photo.


I took my shot from the east side of the crossing, the 1915 shot is from the west side. That's why you don't see the same perspective.

Art House

It's not a matter of "dressing to impress" aboard historic equipment. It's a matter of setting the scene.

A train trip with everyone in period costume would indeed be pretty neat, if annoying to pull off. Last time I saw such a thing, it involved Civil War reenactors. The result looked really good on a wet-plate photograph taken that day, but nitpickers still got mad about it because small details were incorrect (accurate uniforms for the unit the men normally represent, but that particular unit wouldn't have been where it was at that exact portrayed time, so their unit insignia "should" have been changed, some of the unit should have been wearing a very slightly different style of jacket to reflect a recent resupply, etc.) The differences are not at all apparent to an untrained eye and barely so to a lot who are trained.

If anyone does undertake such a thing on a photo charter, the rules will have to be very clear and there will have to be a final arbiter who says "that's good, this isn't." World War II would be easiest to manage--the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor IS coming up, whether or not anyone remembers--because actual vintage street clothing and uniforms are still widely available, as are patterns and similar fabrics. Even so, you'd have to run by reenactors rules and say "all men must be wearing a black, gray or dark blue summer-weight suit, cut and fit appropriate to July 1942, with a suitable colored hat in one of these correct styles..." Else wise, men will show up in kinda sorta soldiery stuff and women in some kinda fortyish-looking dress with flowers on it. Still better for a historic atmosphere than summer casual wear, but somebody would get mad about it.

There is so little guidance about clothing appropriate to situations now that it's hard to get anyone under forty to understand "if you'd wear it to the beach, it doesn't belong in an office." That's why so many businesses have given up and started supplying or requiring a polo shirt and khakis. That combination is hard to make overly revealing.

When I’m at work it’s usually a pair of docker pants, short sleeve shirt & tie or occasionally a golf shirt. Most of the others dress the same. No one at the office has ever told us to dress like that......it’s just the way we do.

But on vacation and that’s usually when I’m on the train......it’s jeans, sneakers, a tee shirt and ball cap. Don’t like it? Look the other way!

Watched a 1949 cop movie last night, set in LA. "Scene of the Crime" with Van Johnson and Arlene Dahl. Andre Previn musical score. Suits, hats, elaborate dresses. And here's one to chew on -- everyone was thin, except for a low-level ex-con who everyone routinely referred to as "Hippo."