"America On The Move"
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History
Washington, DC
You are in Salisbury, North Carolina. The year is 1927. To your left, is a recreation of part of the local railroad station. Here you can meet two travelers. Cast figures represent, at left, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an African American educator who fought against segregation on the trains, and, at right, a traveling salesman, who made his living by traveling through the countryside by rail to visit clients. You can listen to their stories on monitors mounted next to each figure. To the right of the salesman figure, you will find a tactile floor plan of the station that lets you explore the ways that segregation influenced the station's architecture.
To the right of where you are standing now are cast figures of a train conductor and a Pullman Porter. Objects such as a porters' whisk and a railroad watch are in a case in between the two figures. After you pass barrels and crates filled with freight, you encounter the Southern Railways' 1401 locomotive; it's 90 feet long and weighs 290 tons. You can hear the locomotive steaming as it sits at the station platform. You can eavesdrop on a conversation between the engineer and the fireman and learn about their work. Here, too, you'll find a tactile silhouette of the locomotive on the right side of the reader rail. A ramp takes you down to ground level where you can examine the locomotive's huge wheels at close range, and get a sense of the its intricate technology and massive size. Nearby is a horse drawn delivery wagon loaded with barrels of goods. At the front of the 1401 you can touch a large wrench used by workers who repaired locomotives for the Southern Railway at shops in nearby Spencer. In the 1920s, railroads played an incredibly important social, cultural and commercial role.
