TRAINS and other TRANSPORTATION

Welcome to the Historical/Victorian Cat Society pages for trains and other transportation of the Victorian era. We will study trains, coaches, carriages, and other means of getting about in early days. Since we are not limited to the Victorian era, you mat go back further in time for interesting transports.

Nikita La Femme contributed the following...

Although you think of ships, trains, carrages, and even horseback riding when you are considering transportation in the Victorian Age, two very important inventions were developed during that time that changed the face of transportation forever.

They are the Zepplin and the Airplane. Here is information on both of them.

ZEPPELIN was the name given to the duralumin-internal-framed, dirigibles invented by the persistent Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. The LZ1 made its initial flight from a floating hangar on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen in Southern Germany, on 2 July 1900. Archiv der Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH

The Zeppelins were used in both war and peace. In the era before the widespread use of the airplane, they were used for aerial excursions in Germany and made regularly scheduled passenger flights across the Atlantic to Brazil and the United States. In demonstration flights, the Graf Zeppelin traveled to the Arctic and to Palestine, and also circumnavigated the globe. The U.S. Navy acquired a Zeppelin as part of its own dirigible program.

AIRPLANE
Orville and Wilbur Wright built their first machine in 1899. It was a biplane kite which they fitted with wings that could be mechanically twisted. Before attempting a powered flight, they decided to master gliding and built three biplane gliders, which they flew at Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

They completed their first powered machine, the Kitty Hawk, in 1903, and made history's first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flights from level ground without any assistance at takeoff on the morning of December 17, 1903. In 1908 they were able to conclude an agreement for production of the Wright airplane for the U.S. Army.

By Nikita La Femme


Silvermyst and Cheyenne Autumn contribute the following on some other forms of transportation...

1847-OMNIBUS-UK
Early London omnibuses were small because they were taxed according to the number of passengers they could carry. When the tax was abolished, buses with seats on the roof were introduced to carry more people. These double-deckers were called "knife boards" because the back-to-back seats resembled a board using for cleaning knives. Passengers climbed up iron rungs to reach the top deck.



1863 - UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - UK

As cities grew larger, their streets became choked with horse drawn carriages. To ease the problem in London, a railroad was built beneath the city streets. Called the Metropolitan, it was the world's first underground railroad. People flocked to use it even though the smoke from the steam locomotives pulling the trains made it smelly and dirty.



We have received the following from former member,Lloyd

I would like to mew about trolleys. My Meowmie's great- grandfather William Gray was a trolley conductor in Boston, Massachusetts from the late 1880s until he retired in 1926. Meowmie's grandmother Edith Gray's first husband was a trolley driver named Walter Cutter. They settled in Westford, Massachusetts. Here is a good web site to learn more about trolleys. My Meowmie has visited this museum.
Click here: Seashore Trolley Museum - Kennebunkport, Maine - Trolley Museum

Also take a ride from this web site.

The Trolley Shop


Virtual Tour of Victorian Transportation
Submitted by Servo and Sally



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Some graphics By CATSTUFF