Railroads: the Missing Link in Preserving Our Communities and Landscapes

J. Craig Thorpe studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University with a BFA in Industrial Design before moving to Seattle. Mr. Thorpe is a director of the Washington Association of Rail Passengers, a consumer advocacy group.

The idea that “railroads” and “preservation” have anything in common, other than maybe in a museum, never occurs to most people. Yet they did and they do have much in common, providing us with some critical answers to current issues.

Take, for instance, sprawl. The consumerism behind it encourages us to pave over more and more urban land. It also encourages us to carry the trappings of commercialism into rural and wilderness areas. The natural consequences of such individualism are a disregard of any landscape and of each other. Not only does the land suffer; so does community.

Years of this SUV (sports utility vehicle) mentality, whether in the likes of Bellevue or the back country, have distanced us from the fact that railroads, and their city cousins the trolley cars, tread lightly on the landscape and enabled community. To be sure, through the twentieth century railways epitomized industrialization and in places contributed to its excesses. Yet their rights-of-ways blended with cityscape and landscape alike and their services provided connectivity, mobility and a responsible access to wilderness.

In our decades behind the wheel we have also forgotten that railroads once celebrated the landscapes of their routes. Today there is no “art of the interstate” but there most certainly was an unending body of railway art trumpeting the Delaware Water Gap, Niagara Falls, the Allegheny Mountains, the New England and Florida coasts, the Mississippi River, the Rockies, the deserts of the southwest, the California coast, the rainforests of the Northwest and the glaciers of Alaska.

Nowhere was railway art used more lavishly than in promotion of the national parks. Indeed, the major western railroads were instrumental in the establishment of the nation’s park system. In the 1870s, Northern Pacific money enabled the opening of Yellowstone. By joining forces with preservationists such as John Muir, and working with the Department of the Interior, railroad leaders like Louis Hill of the Great Northern, helped create the National Park Service in 1916. Of course the rail carriers stood to gain from such support, but in the words of Walter Fisher, then Secretary of the Interior, it was, “an enlightened self interest.”

Accordingly, millions of travelers entered America’s wonderlands in the company of others and the impact they left was minimal. But with the demise of railway access, sprawl—and all that goes with it—crashed the gates of Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. While on the urban front of late modernism, our cities and suburbs suffered from the dismantling of the great connectors that were the trolley and interurban lines.

But a certain irony of today’s postmodern techno culture is an openness to community and an embrace of preservation. There is also a willingness to toy with history. Two publications of note embody these themes of rail, preservation, community and history. The first is “The Returning City: Historic Preservation and Transit in the Age of Civic Revival” published jointly by the Federal Transit Administration and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Author Dan Costello observes that the concepts of today’s transit oriented development (TOD) are rooted in planning practices commonplace before the auto age. After an introduction and statement of concept, a series of vignettes spotlight communities on the rebound with a mix of rail transit, historic preservation, mixed-use zoning, human scale and pedestrian-friendly development.

A second book, “Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks,” by Alfred Runte (4th edition, Roberts Rinehart/Rowman & Littlefield), overviews the role of the railroads in the development of the national park system and includes a portfolio of grand railway promotional art. But far more than a mere nod to the past, Mr. Runte’s book describes current rail services to national parks and presents a compelling argument for investment in serious rail infrastructure.

Says the author, “That ability of a railroad to slip into the landscape while further captivating the imagination betrays which form of technology still promises the best of national mobility and environmental stewardship.” Runte’s forthcoming volume, “Trains for the Earth; Railroads and American Conservation” promises to further develop these themes.

As a rail artist it is my privilege to add visuals to the works of writers, academics, politicians, activists and advocates for balanced transportation such as the Washington Association of Rail Passengers. Rather than seeing rail as “nostalgic” or as merely another way to move ourselves and our stuff, these men and women present rail as an ethical form of transport. It promises mobility, but a mobility that honors landscape and community. Rather than a technology of consumption, rail is one of preservation and our cityscapes and landscapes beg for its application. §