Why Collect Plane and Train Memorabilia?
Why do we collect items of days gone by? Why do we love to decorate our spaces with pieces of history, with things that may have long outlived their usefulness in today’s rapidly changing world? I think it’s because those things remind us of a time when the world moved more slowly, when life was simpler—“the good old days.”
Some of the things we collect evoke good memories and some not so good. Some remind us of good times, some of bad times. But they do take us away in our minds to remember experiences of our lives that we can share with younger generations, of the way things were back then. It is important to preserve our history in story for the benefit of those who come after us, so they can know and appreciate how far civilization has come.
It was on December 17, 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight. Italy first put planes to military use making reconnaissance, bombing and shelling flights during the Italian-Turkish war between September, 1911 and October, 1912. Beginning in the 1930s only the wealthy were able to afford to fly on commercial flights. It wasn’t until after World War II, in the late 1950s and early 1960s that travel by commercial airlines became more common and within the reach or the middle class.
Here are some names of airlines no longer in existence that you might recognize: Air Midwest, Braniff, Capitol Airways, Eastern Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Pan American World Airways, Transamerica Airlines, Western Pacific Airlines. As you might imagine, any memorabilia from airlines that are no longer in existence have a fascination for those of us who have used the services of those defunct airlines. And they might demand a more or less high price depending on the article and the airline.
And what of the railroad companies that no longer run on the rails that stretched all over this country. East met west at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869, forever changing travel from the eastern to the western United States. Passenger service from Omaha began only five days after the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads met at Promontory Summit.
Interestingly enough, however, it was in the 1950s and 1960s when commercial airline came into greater prominence that passenger rail service went into decline. In addition the building of the interstate highway system and travel by automobile contributed to the near demise of passenger railroad travel. In 1970, a government corporation, Amtrak became the provider of rail services for other than inter-city travelers.
Do you recognize the names of those railroad companies that no longer exist? How about Atchison and Topeka, Atlantic and Pacific, Denver Pacific, Erie Railroad, Gulf Line Railway, New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad, Rock Island and Southern Railway and several hundred others? You may be a collector of railroad memorabilia, of airline memorabilia orof neither. But no matter what you do or don’t collect, the memory of these companies that made it possible for us to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home cannot be forgotten.