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By Avery

Group C looked at this map displaying how travel times changed during the 19th century. The most notable increase in speed and areas served by rail occurs between 1830 and 1857. The graphic emphasizes the jump because the area of train service is set up as an overlay that cuts off where rail service cuts off. Thus, one can see how much rail service literally expanded people’s worlds by making distance places more accessible. It’s a striking way to visualize world view.

One confusing part of the graphic is that it doesn’t explain the way the atlas calculates speed of travel. There are huge discrepancies in travel speed around the country, but they don’t totally seem to correspond with rough geography. It is also unclear whether the speed averages take stops into account or if stops are removed as outliers.

Additionally, our group felt that the map lacked two key descriptive aspects. First, the map does not state whether the trains pictured are passenger, freight, or a mix of both. This is important to know because being able to get goods from a far off place is different from being able to travel (for leisure or business) to that far off place. Second, the map doesn’t have any information about how the experience of riding a train changes over the time periods. Did people stay on a train for six weeks straight when going from the East to the West Coast? Were passenger trains comfortable? It would be helpful to have this information in another tab on the website to gain a fuller understanding of the changes taking place in rail travel. For example, Sherwood’s historiography of rail companies and other analyses of that type would be a great addition to the website, just to add some verbal context to the visual.