How train traveling can teach a family’s black history
“From the time I was born, all I knew was the train station,” my 87-year-old godmother, my Nana, echoed over the phone. We were swapping train stories. I recently took a solo 52-hour train ride from Chicago to California on Amtrak’s California Zephyr. The entire trip was exhilarating. I shared my experience of staying in a roomette, eating in the dining section, and riding in the observation car through the Rocky Mountains. But my godmother remembers train travel differently during the era of the Pullman porters. [travelandleisure.com]
Push to resurrect the Calgary-Edmonton Dayliner
Alberta has been without a train connecting Calgary and Edmonton with the communities in between since 1985, but a new push has begun to restart the Dayliner and it is being proposed to councils all along Alberta’s Queen Elizabeth II Highway corridor. Rail proposals for that stretch of highway are nothing new over the last 20 years. Most of them, however, have been for high-speed rail. This new proposal is different. Alberta Regional Rail has the objective of providing a commuter service that would stop at each of the communities as well as an express route along the existing right of way. [calgaryherald.com]
The fascinating rise and fall of streetcar suburbs
The history of the post-World War II American suburb is inextricably linked to the history of the automobile. These residential neighborhoods, far removed from busy city centers, flourished only because people had cars to commute into work. But suburbs were not always so closely tied to the automobile. In fact, from about 1890-1930, they were shaped by a completely different form of transportation: the streetcar. The rise and fall of the streetcar suburb is a story of how government dollars (or a lack thereof) can drastically shape urban planning and housing development. [governing.com]
Romanized Chinese erases English in Beijing subway
As Beijing welcomed 2022, residents in the Chinese capital noticed a subtle shift taking place in the city’s subway: on signs, the English word “station” has been replaced with “Zhan,” the pinyin, or romanized version, of the Chinese character. And in some cases, English station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Beijing airport have become “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “2 Hao Hangzhanlou” — though the English translations are still displayed in brackets underneath. The changes appear to be a work in progress that first started last month, and come just weeks ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics. [cnn.com]
