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>> i like to introduce our special guest today, bob where there's. bob's and author of course. he has written this book which is the subject of our discussion today. the president traveled by train. it was actually his first of what is now 29 books. it came out in the first edition in 1996. it subsequently has been updated several times in 2018, it was released by echo point books and media. i believe it is the third or fourth addition of the book. bob himself was a journalist by trade and for 30 years worked for the huntington herald dispatch in huntington, west virginia where he currently lives. he has a b.a. a from martial university. while he was in college he worked summers for the railroad. that actually is how i got to

know bob. i interned at the railroad museum in baltimore, maryland and our mutual interest and admiration for the b no got us together. i welcome bob and i will begin the presentation now. one other programming note. understand that all presidents use trains to travel around and still do on some occasions. we have picked several presents that's because of specific issues that they encountered or some specific milestones that are associated with their presidential train travel. at the conclusion of this talk, we would end with a couple of video presentations from the george h. w. bush funeral train, courtesy of union pacific. please stick around for that, we will enjoy that very much. there is three main, i guess, pieces of presidential travel that -- the campaign that you are most familiar with. while in office, and after the president passes away. we're gonna move from president

to president and talk about all three of those. even though it may be a little bit out of chronological order, down to be the best way to handle it. so, bob, are you there? >> yes sir. >> wonderful, welcome to the program. thank you for joining us today. so, we are going to start with the first president to travel by train and how they did it. so bob, talk to us a little bit about andrew jackson and john quincy adams and who was first, and why there's a difference between them. >> well actually, john quincy adams was the first but was after he was president. he was returning to washington to be a member of the u.s. house of representatives and on december 30th, december 17th

1830, he got there and he traveled from massachusetts several ways. steamboat, road, when he got to baltimore the railroad had just started. cars would being pulled by horses. he had a horse and wagon that they put up on a flat car in hauled about seven miles from baltimore to the house. and then they lead his horse and wagon off the flak or anyone dressed the way on the road. definitely, it is the first piggyback operation that the railroad ever saw. piggyback means truck trailers

placed on flat cars and when you get where they're going, they back up, picks them up, and take them off the flicker. very few people know that that first piggyback operation took place in 1830. jackson was the first sitting president who rode a train. he went up to ellicott mills which is now ellicott city by horseback. when he came back, he can be a crossing where the railroad cars, steam cars. steam locomotives were pulling the train. he got on the steam car and road seven or eight miles back.

he was astonished that the train was traveling so fast that nobody got hurt. >> i can imagine that that new technology back then was certainly impressive, and also quite frightening to a lot of people that were not used to that speed of travel. speaking of the speed, before we get to the next item, we are looking here, ladies and gentlemen, at order called emily cars. these two cars are at the baltimore highway railroad museum in baltimore, maryland. you may have seen these before because both of these specific cars were used in the movie amistad with john quincy adams traveling aboard these very cars. which leads me to another item, bob, the first rear road wreck in the united states also involved john quincy adams. that was in 1833. and you want to talk a little bit about that? >> i have my book here just by

looking at it. he was nearly killed in the first railroad accident in the dead states on friday november 8th 1833. he was driving across new jersey to washington about halfway on the railroad, the transportation company. -- the speed was 25 miles per hour. and overheated bearing caused the coach to break, the cars careened down, the coach remained upright and no one it was hurt. but the one just behind, it had 24 passengers aboard, it was overturned. 15 were injured and a woman and child were mutilated beyond expectation of recovery. >> this is from a contempt report, bob, correct? >> correct. >> so quincy adams, even though he wasn't the first sitting

president to ride, he certainly was involved in several early milestones in presidential change ravel. unfortunately, the railroad wreck is one of those that was most notable because the 25 mile an hour travel was something that was very, very unusual for that time and for that era. by the way, bob referenced journals and if you look at the picture we are looking at right now on the cars, down by the wheel on all of the cars in the center of the wheel is a brown circular item. it is where the car actually sits on the wheel itself. when the car rolls down the track, those could get very hot. so hot in the middle with melt and the car would fall down off the wheel. as what bob was described when he said the journal broke and the car derailed then fell off the wheels. then it fell down the embankment. all right, excuse me.

we move on to president abraham lincoln which is someone we probably all know a little bit about as far as his presidential travel. this image you are looking at right now highlights the stuff he made on his journey from illinois after he was elected president to washington d.c.. you can see that it is a little bit fuzzy, apologize for that. but he made 93 individual stops on his real journey. i remember that real journeys then were not like they are now. they were not very quick at all. but before this, before this journey, he spent quite a bit of time in illinois traveling by train because of the lincoln douglass debates. bob, you want to talk a little bit about mr. lincoln's problems with the illinois central railroad during that period of time? >> well, i feel good story about that is one i found in a

book called working in the railroads, over 227 hobbes. -- i had no idea that it existed before i gotten into the research of this book. you can buy these books from libraries if they have them. everywhere -- i finally got a copy, only 200 river printed, i opened it up and the previous one had but not been taken apart. no one had read the book. i carefully took it apart and took the book home, copied every page in it. my favorite story, running for a newspaper in new york city, told about a conversation he had any boxcar.

he and i met accidentally. 9:00 on sunday evening in flagstaff, that is where a train stops on tradition if someone is there to be picked up or dropped off. it's not a regular stop. he had been given to the station. the train that we intended to take was not to. after waiting for half an hour, a thunderstorm had us take refuge in a car. there had been no buildings of any kind at the station. squatted down on the floor of the car. it was then and there that he told me that when he was clerking, his highest political ambition was to be a member of the state legislature. since then of course, he said with a laugh, my friends got me into this business, being a

railroad royer. i did not consider myself ready for the united states senate. they had to be sure, i am convinced that i'm good enough for it but in spite of it all, i say to myself every day. it is too big a thing. his wife mary todd, i'm going to be the president of the united states to. these last words came with the roar of laughter, he was shaking all over with mirth. just think, such a sucker. >> it's one of the stories bob where you don't think of

abraham lincoln as a funny man with a lot of man with much humor, but if you read in the stories about him, he did have an incredible sense of humor and it was quite a humble man. i'm not sure mary talk could force him into the presidency, certainly her inspiration and standing with him and behind him and oftentimes got him to where he ultimately landed. we're gonna talk about other first ladies you played important roles in the lives of their presidents. you talked about what it was like to travel changing against time, we often think in contempt terms about the comforts that we all enjoy in an automobile, an airplane, with air conditioning and the comforts of the modern era. he talked a little bit about what it was like for president lincoln, even after he was elected for example during his journey that he took from springfield to d.c.. what was it like for him to be on board the train back then?

>> even before my time, i'm not sure how it would've worked out except that the cars were wooden. a lot of them had coal stoves, keeping open in the winter. they had air conditioning. no such thing as reclining seats or rotating seats. it was sort of like, i guess, when you see movies of people running on stagecoaches. could've been much better than that. >> i agree. for light, there is obviously no electricity so these candles. >> candles or oil burning mechanisms. >> those kind of open flames on a railroad cart were quite dangerous, people were very gauge worried about traveling spilling the oil or perhaps dropping a candle on the wooden car.

we won't go into re-those problems. certainly, that era of chain travel essentially from the 1860s to early 1900s was quite dangerous because of that and many other issues that we won't go into on this conversation. >> by the early 1900s, they started making passing cars out of steel. they were much more substantial in much safer. >> a great, a great. that is what we used today. so, moving to a little bit more somber subject. we are looking now at abraham lincoln's funeral car. that was used to transport his remains from washington d.c. back to springfield illinois where he was laid to rest. do you want to talk a little bit about the fetal train and the way it unfolded and what the public perception of it was? >> well, that funeral car was

made for lincoln derided as president. but it turned out to be his funeral car because he was fascinated, assassinated shortly before his term was set to expire. the route the train took back to illinois it was similar to, with some exceptions, the one he had trip he had made to washington. there are stories about so many people putting flowers on the rails ahead of the train that the wheels would spin and slip and they would have to get the flowers off the wheels before they went. back in the days when embalming is not the exact science that it was now, they would have to

carry materials in the final car over the casket to protect the face of the deceased. it took several days to get him, to get his body to illinois for burial. >> we are looking at a picture now, bob, of a broader image of the final train. youilnotice the decorations that feooned the outside of the train with the different bunting, the flags. i'm going to move to another picture here whicis a little bit of a close-up of the locomotive. you notice there is a picture of abraham lincoln prominently placed on the front of the locomotive. so people were aware of the significance of the trip. you see the locomotive itself is quite small compared to modern standards. but for the air, this was the top-of-the-line transportation. >> -- >> we're gonna move on now to

theodore roosevelt, known as the bull moose. his presidency of course began suddenly with the assassination of william mckinley. but before we get to that, we will talk a little bit about president roosevelt's the campaign or. of course, he has the nickname the bull moose because he was a man of boundless energy. quite an intellectual. and quite a physical presence in modern parlance. he would be the guy that sucked the oxygen out of the room when he entered it. in your book, you talk about sort of the conundrum, he enjoyed train travel and traveled extensively, but he also was the first president to fly in an airplane. that was after his administration, when he traveled and campaign for vice president in 1900, he traveled

21,000 miles during that campaign on a train and made 673 speeches according to your book. here we have a picture of him making a speech from the rear platform of his observation car, you talk a little bit about what that speech was like and how it unfolded when the train arrived? >> when the train got to a certain city, the candidate will come out from the rear of his private car like you see in the picture there and he would talk directly to the people. that was a lot better than the way president travel today, 5000 feet up in the air. people got to know them. i remember hearing putin saying something like, why do you do this, why do go all over the

place speaking to people from the rear of a train? he says, well, i don't have anything else to do, nothing better to do. people got to know present that way, they got you know what they believed in, what they promised to do. make sure that they can find out in the white house what he does what he says he's going to do. >> did the president or the candidate in this case, your department train and walk through the crowd, correct? >> yes. >> oh secured like that back and then in the pr era. not very good. as a matter of fact, there is a story not about himself but about tom daley who had his

train stop in some city, i forget which one it was in western kentucky. he was campaigning against harry truman and the engineer of the train had uncoupled from the train and moved ahead from the water in the water tank. when he came back, the train started pitching backwards. people were afraid that somebody was gonna get killed or hurt, being run over by a reverse moving train. but there was a police officer named ernest chapman who very quickly reached out and pulled the lever that put the brakes on the train and stopped people from getting hurt or killed by that reversal. it was, in a way, i guess from

his time on up, it was the best way to find out what a man looks like, what a man things like. it did have its -- >> it aptly does. it still does today. as we will see when we get to that union pacific video, there's a couple of clips of people standing and respecting president bush as he moved to college station on the spinal train ship. you will notice that some people are standing dangerously close to track which is something that we would definitely discourage. a couple of other things, bob when we're talking about tr. in 1906, in your book, it discussed this enough. obviously, the railroad can do this for three and if you are traveling, 20,000 miles, there is expenses associate with that. in 1906 congress passed

appreciation for travel you want to talk about that. i tell you, it's a better story about that. what >> okay. >> calvin coolidge, he was a very frugal man. pot some say he was actually tight. but he did not like the idea of having a special trained for the president was. like you could put my car on the rear of the train a can do a special train so, december of 1927, in chicago, that two places in that city. they decided he would go in a regular compartment, irregular

sleeping car. i believe the name of the cross president grant. he would eat in the diner, sleep in that compartment. he found out before too long, that this was before trains were air conditioned, that the car was very hot. even though it was in december. he had to sit in his compartment with the door open. and the word passed through the train, that he would come, walking along the aisle, people would look in there and gawk at him, he did not like that. and he would eat his meals, along with the other passengers,

with was a very insecure situation for the secret service. we one time, a waiter asked him, what is your coffee all right? and he just said, yes. later he asked his wife, why would he say that? he thought there might be something wrong with it. [laughter] at another stop, to talk about his frugal habits, he was frugal in this stage was. i think this stop was in ohio, another trip east. the secret service came and said, there are a lot of people that want to hear from you, who have gathered around the rear of the car. finally, he came out.

it took him a long time to answer the question. and just as he came out, the train started forward. and he said to the crowd, goodbye! [laughter] >> well, bob, they heard from him. >> one word. >> he was a man of economy, in his speech as well, no doubt about that. the image we are looking at, it is not a mistake, it is called a stereoscopic image. it's designed to provide depth of the field if you are wearing the proper eyeglasses to see that. stereo means each i would see one side of it. with glasses on, you would see a very deep field. you would see all those faces at the very back. notice that tr is at the rear of the platform, as a traditionally was. he's leaning forward, he's missing more modern invention, we will talk about it in a moment, and that is voice

amplification or a cyst pa system, it's what they call it. now all of the campaigning that was done, in this era, was by shouting it out. you can see how close the people were to the car because they wanted to hear what he had to say. if you are not good at projecting your voice, or, you could even call this yelling, people could not hear what you had to say. so whatever you said would not make much difference because people could not hear it. especially reporters wanted to get close to the car. we will see pictures later on of this, trying to get the exact words the president spoke, or in this case, the candidate. so they could record their stories accurately and accuse each other of misquoting and all of the political stuff that you understand happens then and now. the other thing, back to the money, when roosevelt campaign in 1900 as the vice presidential candidate, the cost of that campaign trip was

$118,000. and there was no money to pay it. there was a deep sense of embarrassment in the republican party, and with roosevelt. >> congress allowed for presidential travel and appropriation of $25, 000, which today almost seems like nothing. back then it was a princely sum of money for president to travel by train. excuse me, we will move ahead. this is another example of a stereoscopic image. and the way trains were decorated, bob mentioned the flowers earlier, placed on the rails of the lincoln funeral train. this is a more happy occasion. you can see that the locomotive is decked out in all sorts of finery. i'm not sure that a hard core railroader would appreciate that, but the people riding the train loved it. we will move on to a president you probably would not expect

to see in this presentation, warren harding, 1920 1923, he served in office. and here he is in the back of a car, as tradition would have it, with his wife, and an associate. they are about to go on a trip. the reason why i picked president harding, and of course all of the presidents are covered in bob's book, if i have not already mentioned that. there is his wife, waving to the crowd. notice she is decked out in the early 20th century traditional garb, wearing gloves, and a hat. the reason why i mentioned warren harding, he took an enormous trip, probably one of the longest trips a sitting president took, to alaska, to complete the last major railroad instructed in the united states, the alaska railroads. before that, by the way, this is a picture of a locomotive, decked out to pull that train. here is a picture of the

locomotive in alaska, as this train wound towards the location of alaska. but before we get to that, warren harding actually enjoyed something that president teddy roosevelt and president wilson did not, and that was amplification of his voice. by this time, in the late 19 teens, early 19 twenties, at&t install a voice amplification system, that is what they called it, in the presidential car. they were able to use it to broadcast their voice. we will see pictures of what that looked like in a moment. but bob, first let's talk a little bit about the presidential trip to alaska. harding did not campaign much by train. they called it a front porch campaign where people came to him, rather than him going to them. but bob, when he was elected, he took the throttle for a trip in texas.

do you want to talk a little bit about that? >> in that case, he was like me. he loved to ride the cabs of locomotives. and on several occasions, he was pictured riding in the cab of an electric locomotive. and the alaska train was a steam train, and he ran it for several miles. he had the engineer standing right beside of him. i would like to mention one thing that happened to him before he became president. and this was before 1920. like you say, he did not make very many campaign trips, but he did make one. and as he was coming down the railroad between parkersburg and huntington, he was at a

small stop called millwood. he was not supposed to stop there. but an equalizer spurring under his private car broke. and then it derailed the car. so, it rode across a trestle, about 900 feet without going into mill creek or the ohio river. the car was bouncing around, hitting the spike heads off. but it did not leave the track until it got to drive to the south side of that trestle. parker and his wife were in the car. they were trying their best to keep their balance as the car bobbed around, twisted and

turned. they came out to see what had happened. and they viewed the wreck. they simply left the car where it was. mason they got back on the next car forward, went to make a stop at nation city. but in the president asked to use what happened to him as an illustration, that it is better to elect me, and keep the other parties from derailing. >> so he came up with a campaign slogan, right there on the spot? you mentioned the other party, bob. james cox was his opponent in the 1920 election. and an interesting observation you made in your book, is when james cox was traveling by train, which is obviously the most effective way to travel, he went from dayton, ohio to

san francisco. and when they on board the train, they published a newspaper which was specific to the train, four pages long, that they distributed every day while they were on route. this was so the media could be informed of candidate cox, of course, of what he was up to. on any particular issue of the day. as far as i could tell from your book, bob, that's the only time a newspaper was published on board a train while it was in motion. is that a fair statement? >> i believe that is correct, you are right. >> so they are combining two of your favorite professions, in one. journalism and the railroad, right? by the way, even though he did not not win the election, mr. cox traveled almost 22,000 miles, campaigning by train. he met, was estimated to have met almost 2 million people during that trip. probably shook about half of those hands. so don't think that just

because you meet people, you win elections. he was defeated by president harding. moving on to harding's trip to alaska, bob. this was an enormous trip. 70 people were in this party. june, 1923. the goal was to completely alaska railroad with the traditional cold spike. here are a couple of other images i will move through. this journey to what then, and some would say now, is quite a wilderness. oh, a little too far ahead! talk about the significance of the gold spike. both what that meant in 1869 as well as what the gold spike was, why is this a significant event? >> well, because he symbolized the completion of the railroad line. pictured in my book, where harding actually, he looks kind of awkward, like i would be, if

i were to drive a spike into the rail. i think what they did, is they let him have the first whack. and the railroad people who do that kind of thing for a living, when the rest of the way in. it was very hot, even in alaska. i think that spelled trouble for him, later on in the trip. >> we are about to move into that. after he completed the last spike, the plan was to take the train all of the way back, from fairbanks, to seattle, i believe. they took a ship. they were going to take a train back to washington, d.c.. but early on in the trip, president harding took ill. so they diverted to san

francisco. ultimately, he passed away in san francisco, which led to this. not to be more bag, but you will notice that his remains, they are covered in the flag as is tradition, but it is loaded rather haphazardly into a baggage car, to be transported back to washington, d.c.. i pointed this out to you not because i think they were doing anything wrong, but because this process of moving the remains of a deceased president by train has evolved a lot from the era of lincoln. we are now looking at harding. we are about to move into fdr, eisenhower and leader george h. w. bush. it is a much more solemn occasion than you see in this photo here, which i wanted to share with you as a point of contrast to what we will talk about in a little bit. so now, i would like to move on, bob, to franklin roosevelt, a

man who spent an enormous amount of time on a train, while he was president. in fact, in your book, we talk about mentioning, he traveled about 243,000 miles, some 399 distinct trips. in ayou also called the roosevet administration, his travel on a train, a time of curious transition. do you want to talk about what that means? >> of course. the biggest change occurred after the united states entered world war ii, the after the bombing of pearl harbor by the japanese on december 7th. i think that it was early in 1942, they gave him an especially modernized,

re-equipped car. the name was ferdinand magellan. and it was one of six cars, the company built, in august of 1929. it was a result of world war ii. the crews were produced from five, to four. the large dining room, and observation lounge. there was steele armored plating, three eighths of an inch thick, on the sides, the floor, to make this car bulletproof and bomb proof. the there was three inch thick bullet proof glass, and on top there was a 50 caliber machine gun. there were safety measures in

case it derailed, fell off a bridge or whatever. patches in the observation lounge ceiling, along the side of the car, near the center of the car, above the shower. special wheels, roller bearing were installed to support the extra weight. by the way the wheat -- weight increase from 192 142 and a half pounds, the heaviest railroad car every rebuild, as the case may be. they're was one storage compartment for ammunition. it took the 6000 pounds of ice and in bunkers to keep the car cool. they would have to stop along the way when they ran out of place. every room had a telephone. when the train was standing, the telephone was plugged into

an outlet. when the train was moving, it was connected to a communications car at the end of the train, which could put the president in touch with any world leader, anywhere. the there was a backdoor that led to the lounge, the which way to 1500 panelists. it could only be open from the inside. the only the word pullman on the letter board. and later, potus, the president of the united states seal, was on the real -- rear railing, it was made higher because roosevelt had polio, his legs did not work. so the higher platform would help to hold himself up, he did

not want anyone to know that his handicapped, the kept everyone from finding out. and later, an elevator was installed on the rear platform, so that they could wheel him in privacy. afterwards, the elevator would go up to wheel him up the rear platform, to get him to the side of the car. the mothership questioned supported, the it was called u.s. car number one. they only marker on it, was that it's that u.s. car number one. roosevelt traveled 50,000 miles. truman traveled almost 30,000 miles in the 1948 campaign alone. ike traveled in it three times. he called it the old art. as a matter of fact, someone had a bright idea one time, he

was on his way, the to dedicate a new college or something. they put it on the head and of the train, behind the buffer car. that would leave a very small amount of room between the end of the car and the bumper car. so when he tried to speak to people at the stop in ohio, not very many people could get close enough to see or hear him. he never did it that way again. the last time the car was used, was one -- point the draft to connecticut and january 1st, 1954, to visit the nuclear sub, the nautilus. and then ronald reagan used the car in 1984, october 12th, 1984,