(no subject)

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

the Saturday Evening Post, September 15 1956, p. 104

Comments

[benbenberi.livejournal.com]

Stewardess-nurse??? I don't get it...

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

me neither

my best guess is that they hired people (OK, "girls") who had an RN

[misstia]

back in the early days of air flights they would routinely have nurses on board due to ear issues, etc....so perhaps they got that moniker from the early airlines?

by the late 50s traveling by train cross country was starting to die out and perhaps it was a way to make people feel 'safer' about traveling cross country on a train and to boost travel by train???

that's all i can think of....

[adrienneee.livejournal.com]

This. For many years, airline hostesses/stewardesses were almost always registered nurses.

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

Emergencies can happen anywhere, anytime. I once took Amtrak from Portland to Chicago and somewhere in Washington state at about 2 a.m. the train had to stop at a crossing to put a passenger on an ambulance. We appeared to be in the middle of nowhere because I didn't see lights from a town anywhere. No telling how long the passenger had to wait before we met the ambulance. That's the time when having someone with medical training on staff would come in handy.

Now companies provide first aid training to employees and I would think that long distance trains would have things like AEDs on board. I would hope so, anyway, especially with the number of seniors that like to take the train.

[samtyr.livejournal.com]

I love trains... ::sighs::

[fishstickmarie.livejournal.com]

Me too. It's my favorite way to travel.

[janenx01.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of trains. But the experience is never good for me.

[beetle-breath.livejournal.com]

same. on my honeymoon, we took a train from London to Glasgow. It was miserable. D:

but I can handle the metro. probably because the ride is shorter.

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

Actually, early airline stewardesses (there were stewards, previously, but no stewardesses until Ellen Church, in 1930) — in the United States — were required to be nurses as well. This is likely a carryover from that.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

cool, thanks !!

[misstia]

i just posted such a comment above--and then continued reading comments!!

[janenx01.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago we took the train from Seattle to Sacramento. It was dirty, uncomfortable, and about 6 hours late arriving. UGH. Never again.

I bet it was hot as hell in those vista domes.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Modern-day commuter trains in the US are a travesty ... try them almost anywhere else in the developed world. Americans forgot how to do trains sometime in the 60s.

[janenx01.livejournal.com]

Travel in general is a pain in the ass now. I'm old enough to remember when traveling by air wasn't a giant cattle call.

I am a crone.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

This is pretty interesting - showing the incredible growth in air travel:
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/evolairtransport.html

Also, air travel was much, much more expensive comparatively speaking:
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfarenylondon.html

Air travel is now *cheaper* than rail travel; and hardly anyone is inclined to spend more money to take a week to get from one coast to the other when they could do it with one eight hour burst of badness.

[janenx01.livejournal.com]

My family has always worked for various airlines (TWA, AA, PanAm, Continental, etc.), so we flew in the 60s and 70s for comparatively little money. So I was lucky to be able to fly when we couldn't have afforded it otherwise.

Even in the 80s when I worked for American, it was more civilized than it is now.

If trains were less expensive and better maintained, I would totally take the train over an airplane. You can't fall 30,000 feet out of the Coast Starlight.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Well the day is coming; peak oil pretty much guarantees that. People simply won't be able to afford to commute 90 minutes each way in a single-occupancy vehicle, so commuter rail will be the only option in many cases. And the cost of air travel will have to go up rather sharply too.

We did take one train, from DC to NYC, that was everything you could want from a commuter trip - quiet, clean, comfortable, on time.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=AM_Route_C&pagename=am%2FLayout&cid=1241245664867
But there again, it just costs more. You can't get around it, one of the reasons travel is the way it is now, is the demand for lower fares; and that necessarily means worse service.

[janenx01.livejournal.com]

OMG don't get me started on peak oil. If my family hears the words "Hubbert curve" come out of my mouth one more time I think they'll punch me.

I think we are going to get a lot more local in our lifetimes.

[lightning-rose.livejournal.com]

You may be interested in the essay, "Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis"

http://www.npg.org/specialreports/bartlett_index.htm

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

I'm always sulking over having missed the Train Age. I also hate not being able to travel by ship across the ocean.

[beetle-breath.livejournal.com]

the perspective is all kinds of whack. it's wigging me out

[ejia-arath03.livejournal.com]

And these seem to be adorable mini-stewardess-nurses who are three feet tall! I can understand why grandma wants to take a picture.

[paularubia.livejournal.com]

Why is she in a trough?

[bzul.livejournal.com]

Bending over incessantly for many hours to serve and tend passengers would make one wish, I'm guessin', for a practical awareness of levels in the coach design. When the going gets tough, the trough gets gratifying.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

that would make sense, wouldn't it

my inital thought was the seats needed to be higher so people could see out the dome windows.