The Slower Road

This street scene by the Syracuse, NY, train station (c. 1905) shows a train locomotive, a horseless brougham (with a set of pretty substantial-looking rear wheels) sitting next to the tracks, a number of baggage trolleys, a few (horsed) broughams awaiting passengers, and a “ghost” horse (that driver must’ve picked up his passengers and started moving out of the frame during the exposure).

Here are two interesting blog posts that I found today via Twitter …

First: a description and picture of a nineteenth-century Hackney coach waterman, whose job it was to bring food and water to the horses waiting at his particular Hackney-coach [i.e., taxi] stand in London.

By the end of that century, lumbering old coaches had been largely replaced in their role as “taxicabs” by lighter four-wheeled “growlers” …

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… and the ubiquitous and unmistakable Hansom Cab, of which there were reportedly 10,000 on London’s streets in 1890. …

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And today’s second fascinating blog post (containing beautiful images, as well) is about the perils of traveling across the Lancaster Sands. Be sure to scroll through the comments and watch the video of the Duke of Edinburgh and several other drivers making the same trip in the mid-1980s.

I know that some local deliveries (of milk and ice, especially) were still made with horse-drawn vehicles long after cars and trucks had taken over elsewhere, but check out this photo from 1920 …

I’m guessing this was an advertising or publicity photo for Smith’s Transfer and Storage Co. (in Washington, DC). At the front of the procession is a moving van hitched to three horses. Behind them are four different sizes and shapes of motorized vehicles, and then four more horse-drawn vans.