How the United States learned, and then forgot "railroad time"


I was watching an old movie from the 1920s on YouTube, and was surprised to see a reference to "railroad time". Specifically, the character was saying that that the ship sailed at a particular time, which he emphasised by saying "railroad time". And even though I had never heard the phrase before, I knew what it meant - right on time. If you weren't there at that time, you would miss the boat.

Time-travel with me to a time when people had to be at the train station right on time, or the train would leave without them, and they'd be stuck until the next train. It must have been a very difficult thing for people to have to suddenly deal with, especially people who weren't "clock watchers", and who woke up at sunrise, that sort of thing. From what I'm learning, this attention to specific detail as it relates to time was something that the railroads insisted on, because they had a schedule to follow, and the distances that they covered were much faster than what most people were accustomed to. Trains could go the speed of a galloping horse for miles and miles. It must have been amazing.


Of course it was a major problem for people who had become accustomed to being more casual about time. Showing up just a few minutes after a train leaves means that you're stuck there. And almost overnight people started becoming conscious of time, with many of them carrying watches, usually carried in a vest pocket.

Of course, human nature being what it is, most people tried to avoid sitting around a train station by cutting it as close as possible. A lot of people ran after the train, and jumped on it while it was moving. In old movies it's funny, but people must have gotten hurt, which isn't funny.

In a long life, I've never ridden on a train, I've mostly been in a car, and occasionally on an airplane. And to my amazement, when I was going to fly, I'd be asked to arrive two hours ahead of time at the airport. This puzzled me until I realized that airports had realized that people had forgotten "railroad time", and unless they came up with some kind of system, they would have to fly away without a large percentage of customers, who simply couldn't get to the airport early enough to be on the plane before it took off.

I like reading old books, and often the beautiful girl looks at the clock and says, "My! Is that the time? I must rush!" and she's off to catch the 11:42. She may or may not be wearing a watch on the way to the station, but she has a "feel" for the time, and makes her train. She knew railroad time.

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