It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Pharmasave Huntsville!
We don’t know the year this photo was taken, but it’s been many decades since most people travelled with trunks. What else do you notice about this scene? (Photo courtesy of the CN Images of Canada Gallery)
Last week we shared this photo with you:
In some ways, Huntsville’s downtown has hardly changed in decades. This photo, looking east along Main Street, was taken in the 1930s. (Photo: Annabelle Studio)
If you want to see more Wayback Wednesday photos, click here.
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The CN Images of Canada web page identifies this picture as ID NumberX-19164
The date is shown as 1944.
On most passenger trains the baggage car is handled near the front of the train. With the shadow of the station cast onto the station platform, I can see this is a southbound train.
CNR regularly sent photographers to tourist destinations in Canada to take publicity pictures that were later published in pamphlets to promote rail travel. There were quite a few pictures in the collection taken in 1944.
I went to Montreal in 1973-1974 to have a look at the collection at CN’s corporate headquarters. Most have since been turned over to the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa.
This could also be a load of trunks and duffle bags going to a summer camp in the 1940’s.
Don’t know about this time, but the photo is striking to me. The last time I saw my mother she was blowing me a kiss off the VIA train leaving Huntsville in 1989, right where this scene took place. Thanks for the memory spark.
I am guessing that all those duffel bags belong to folks who served in WWII. Apparently this is when the bags came into popular use and are named after a town in Belgium (Duffel). The fabric was created to be strong, sturdy and easy to fold up. So this photo is probably in the late 40’s or 50’s.
The photo of the train and baggage has, besides the trunks, a number of bags. I still have my father’s canvas sea bag from when he was in the navy during WWII and it looks a lot like the bags in the photo. Possibly the photo was taken in the early 1940’s.