Pipeline Press
  • HOME
  • Books
    • Organs and Organists
    • Organ-isms Anecdotes Book
    • Organist at your service
    • Puzzle Book >
      • Grids
      • Puzzle Images
      • Errata
      • Solutions >
        • Alphabet soup
        • A-mazing tuner
        • Crosswords
        • Letter Ladders
        • Plain Difficult
        • Ring the Changes
        • Logic Problems
        • Spot the difference
        • Sudoku
        • Tricky Passages
        • Word Search
    • Looking Up
    • The Organ's Prayer
    • Olivier Latry in conversation
    • Paradisus Musicus
  • Recordings
    • Resounding Aftershocks CD
    • Organ Capers
  • Organists In the kitchen
    • RECIPE INDEX >
      • Gillian Weir
      • Dianne Halliday
      • Martin Doering-in English
      • Martin Doering-in German
      • Irmtraud Tarr
      • Robin Peirce
      • Hannah Parry
      • Birger Petersen
      • Marie-Louise Langlais
      • Thierry Mechler
      • Nina De Sole
      • Martin Setchell
      • Roberto Bertero
      • Carson Cooman
      • Ronald Watson
      • Katherine Dienes-Williams
      • Grimoaldo Macchia
      • Alexander Kellarev
      • Dorothy Young Riess
      • Andreas Willscher
      • Katelyn Emerson
      • Agnes Armstrong
      • Michael Barone
      • Claudius Winterhalter
      • Titus Grenyer
      • Alison Clark
      • Paul Spicer
      • Christiane Sauter-Pflomm
      • James Kibbie
      • James Flores
      • Inoue Hiroko​
      • Barry Jordan
      • Gareth Perkins
      • Thomas Ospital
    • Notes on weights and measures
  • Newsletters
  • Gifts
  • Articles & Reviews
    • Book & CD reviews >
      • Bevington
      • Booths of Wakefield
      • The Organ of Saint Sulpice, Paris
      • Messaien - Pierre Pincemaille
      • The Music of Ripon Cathedral
      • The Nordic - Baltic Organ Book
      • A Life in Music
      • Franck played by Pincemaille
      • Mystical vision
      • Noëls of Louis-Claude Daquin
      • Homage à Daniel Roth
      • Bach's complete works
      • Organ works of JPE Hartmann
      • The Box of Whistles ​by John Norman
      • Kristiaan Seynhave plays César Franck
      • Bach Orgelwerke played by Michael Radulescu
      • Le Grand Cavaillé-Coll de la Cathédrale d’Angers
      • The Organs and Organists of Ludlow Parish Church
      • The Hakims at Sacré Coeur
    • 2002 >
      • Alfred Hollins
      • Snetzler-1
      • Snetzler-2
      • Organ Voices
      • Organ Blowers 1
      • Organ Blowers 2
      • Organ Blowers 3
      • Organ Cases
      • Organ Cases 2
      • Organ Cases 3
    • 2003 >
      • Organ Cases 4
      • Architects and organ builders
      • Plain vanilla or chocolate?
      • Canterbury Cousins
      • Blenheim Palace and elsewhere
      • Ornament - applied and misapplied
      • Of hats and arms
      • Invisible organs
      • Organ Anthology
      • Organ Anthology Part 2
      • Ghosts
    • 2004 >
      • Spanish Fly
      • The Wonderful Woofyt
      • Mine's bigger than yours
      • Flames, frets and fiddles
      • Angelicals
      • Telegram from America
      • Booth's Puffs
      • Barker Lever
      • Bettering Barker
      • Alternative Hymn Book
      • Tale of Two Organs
      • Tale of Two Organs (continued)
      • Guitarists do it better
      • Music for the feast of Christmas
    • 2005 >
      • The art of improvisation
      • Records and Reminiscences
      • The Case is Altered
      • Fashion Notes
      • Two town Halls - Sydney & Reading
      • The organ that time and men forgot
      • Edward Heath
      • Tin Whistles
      • Secrets of the Opera
      • Singing in the train
      • Buttoning up
    • 2006 >
      • Automobile blues
      • Pipes and packing cases
      • Harry remembers
      • Harry remembers 2
      • Bismarck and the pipe organ
      • Harry remembers 3
      • Playing Aids 1
      • Playing Aids 2
      • Connections
    • 2007 >
      • The birthday Present
      • Harry Remembers 4
      • Playing Aids 3
      • Wonder of Gascony
      • Gilding the Lily
      • A Most Eloquent Music
      • Seeing Double - Part 1
      • Seeing Double - Part 2
      • Humble Relations - American branch
      • Humble Relations - French branch
      • Tops, Noils, Shoddy and Mungo
      • Tops, Noils, and Handel's Messiah
    • 2008 >
      • Neanderthal Hymn Writer
      • Brindley and Foster Byway
      • The demise of Brindley and Foster
      • Flying High
      • Dorothea, Queen of Denmark - and an organ​
      • Time's Ever-Rolling Stream
    • 2009 >
      • Giving them names
      • Dudley Savage
      • Three organ cases
      • Henery's finest hour
      • Sneezes from the Organ Loft
      • 20th Century Organists
      • Philip Marshall Part 2
      • Part 2 20th Century organists
      • More sneezes from the organ loft
      • Country church curiosity
    • 2010 >
      • The Italian Face of Salzburg
      • Ladies at the Console
      • Gothic organ cases
      • Gothick organ cases
      • Orders and decorations
      • Organs-in-fiction
      • Christmas-recipes
    • 2011 >
      • Oddments and Oddities
      • Memorials and Monuments
      • A Cunning Player - King David
      • Facing the Music
      • Celestial Bands
      • Look-Up
      • Durham-Degrees
    • 2013 >
      • Archibald McIndoe
      • Brigadier-Wagthorpe
    • 2017 >
      • Transports of Delight
  • JIGSAW PUZZLES
  • Competitions
  • Sheet music
  • Photos
  • Calendars
  • Links
  • Blog
  • About Us - and other info
    • Contact Us
    • Search
    • NZOrgan
    • Part 1 of Jenny's earthquake story
    • Part 2 of Jenny's earthquake story
    • Shipping >
      • Returns & refunds
      • Privacy policy
Previous
Index
Next

Picture

Singing in the train

Should organs make a come-back in trains? David Bridgeman-Sutton takes a brief look at the days when arduous journeys were eased by the sound of music
Passage by comfortless steamship and Ellis Island anxieties behind them, many immigrants to the United States faced further extended travel. Vast distances between cities and relatively low train speeds meant that several days and nights had often to be spent in railroad cars. Conditions c.1870 were far from luxurious – picture 1. Seats were slatted, not upholstered; those lucky enough to secure one of the precarious-looking bunks needed considerable agility to reach it. Nevertheless, it represented a great improvement on facilities available only 10 years earlier.
Picture
1: US Immigrant coach.
Picture
2: US Pullman Car with organ – interior
Established citizens with solid bank accounts fared much better. About 1857, George Pullman had introduced Parlour cars offering many of the comforts of home. Picture 2 shows the interior of such a car on a Sunday morning. The occupants are singing hymns to the accompaniment of what is clearly an organ – it has two manuals and draw-stops. Other details are less clear: surely for economy of space, it must have been a reed organ? Beside, a peripatetic pipe instrument would have presented many tuning and maintenance problems.

The original caption describes the player as “an elderly German”. Was he was a volunteer – perhaps from the immigrant section of the train? He might have left a lifetime of playing an instrument by Arp Schnitger or by Silbermann to join younger members of his family who had established themselves in the New World. Let us hope that he made his crossing of the Atlantic on a ship of the Hamburg-Amerika line. This company treated its steerage-class passengers better than most; in a few years they could well be first-class travellers, revisiting their homeland.
Which hymns are those well-dressed passengers of 1870 singing? Certainly not those of Moody and Sankey, whose collaboration would not begin for another year. Perhaps they are Scottish metrical psalms, which by then had been popular with many denominations for over 200 years.

​Or they could be Catherine Winkworth’s translations of Lutheran chorales. These had been published over the previous 12 years and a large number remain in use to-day. If this were the case, the organist may have been inspired to improvise a prelude on one of the melodies.
Picture
Pic. 3
Picture 3 is a digital realisation by Lubbert Schenk (click on the image to enlarge for best view) of one of the most luxurious types of US Pullman vehicle. This Palace car has private luggage compartment, kitchen and balcony and could be hired by a family for its exclusive use on a journey; it illustrates the American custom of naming Pullman cars after distinguished citizens: Commander Robert E Peary (1856-1920) led several explorations in Arctic regions. By contrast, European Pullman vehicles bore classical names – like Niobe, Sappho and Minerva.
Picture
Pic. 4
Picture 4 is one of Currier and Ives’ prints of American life in the nineteenth century, with the conductor on the balcony of a rather more mundane type of car passing through a station yard. 
​The exterior design was characteristic - dome-ended clerestory roof, open balconies and large windows above match boarded sides. It is one familiar to many older New Zealanders. Rakes of stock of this kind, painted red, formed the Southerner express between Picton and Invercargill until the end of steam in the 1970s. Even later, similar coaches were still in use on Wellington suburban services. 
​ 

These were rather Spartan in their accommodation and certainly none contained an organ. This was a pity. A trainload of singing kiwis making its way along the Hutt Valley would have inspired great deeds and stirring verse.
​POSTSCRIPT:
Lubbert Schenk has designed a page for people to make a paper model of the Pullman car he drew for "Singing In The Train."
Download it here:
David Bridgeman-Sutton,
October 11, 2005

Credits:
  1. Picture 3 was specially created for this page by Lubbert Schenk; www.softart.nl
  2. railposters.co.uk

Picture

looking for SOMETHING?

Books
Recordings
Printed music
​
Photographs
Gifts
​Calendars
​Blog
​
Links

Puzzle book grids and solutions
(Free registration & log in required)
GENERAL INFO
Contact
About Us
​
Search
​


Our earthquake stories

Support

Shipping
Returns and refunds
Privacy and Cookie declaration

© COPYRIGHT 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.