Comfort and luxury on the rails: here's what train travel in the United States looked like in the 1950s

Once the United States could boast of the most developed railway transport system in the world, but after the Second World War, the Americans actually deliberately destroyed the mass transportation of people by rail.

The last breath of the Great Railway Era was the 1950s, which were the beginning of the end. At that time, the Sunset Limited was still running – the oldest named train in the United States, running since November 1894. We suggest you take a look at its cars.

These amazing photos from the digital collections of SMU libraries were taken by American photographer Robert Yarnall Ritchie and demonstrate the luxury of the Sunset Limited Southern Pacific Railway in 1950.

At the beginning of the XX century, the length of the US railways reached a fantastic 416 thousand kilometers even by modern standards. In the 1950s, the "Great Rail Pogrom" began in America, which led to the decline and degradation of almost all railway transport, and especially its passenger part.

But then the Great Rail Pogrom began, which lasted until the 1970s. Grandiose railway stations built in the rail "golden era" were ruthlessly demolished, reconstructed and simply abandoned.

Already in 1957, a sharp reduction in passenger traffic on the railways began. The development of high-speed air transport made traveling by rail for a long distance an anachronism. By 1965, only 10,000 passenger cars remained in regular operation in the United States, which was 85% less than in 1929.