Riding the rails

This weekend we visited the Gold Coast Railroad Museum because they have no entrance fees on the first Saturday of the month. One of my secret frugally-styling tips is that I note all free days for museums or parks on my calendar, and then if I feel like doing something that weekend, I just check my calendar.

Andrew is a big fan of trains, and I am a big fan of history, so it was a fun for both of us even though it was rather hot.

The car I'm siting in here is one of the cars that explicitly shows the evidence of segregation. There were two identical compartments, each labelled with a sign indicating either "White" or "Colored." The White section was always the first one in the car. When the train did its return trip, the car was oriented in the opposite direction, so they just flipped the "White" sign to "Colored" and vice versa. The fact that both groups sat in each identical section, just at different times2 really illustrated the artificial nature of the separation.

I was surprised that every sleeper berth had its own sink and toilet. (You can see part of the metal fold-down sink on the left side of the picture below.) It would be kind of nice to have a sink in my compartment, but I think I would prefer not to have a toilet 6 inches from where I'm sleeping.

There were cars with seats and sleeping berths for one, two, or  three people. Here, you can see that the top berth has been folded down, but the bottom berth (made when the two seats facing each other were folded down) hasn't been made yet. If people truly fit on those berths, then it was clear that they were much shorter and much thinner than we are today. I could sleep on those berths, but I don't think my size is that of an average American any more.