The very first passenger cars were really stagecoaches with railroad wheels, and that’s why we still use the name coach. Some old-time passenger cars had two decks. All the cars were fastened together with chains, so they banged and whacked each other when the train started or stopped. Sparks from the woodburning locomotive flew back and set clothes on fire. Rails were only thin strips of iron nailed to wood. Sometimes the strips broke loose and jabbed right up through a car.

In the beginning, an engine had no closed-in cab for the engineer and fireman. They didn’t want to be closed in. It was safer to stand outside so they could jump off quickly in case of accident. Cows on the track often caused trouble. Then a man named Isaac Dripps invented a cowcatcher made of sharp spears. But farmers complained that it killed too many animals, so scoop-shaped cowcatchers were installed. The name for a cowcatcher now is pilot.

The first headlight was a wood fire built on a small flat car pushed ahead of the engine. Later, whale-oil and kerosene lamps showed the way at night.

Engineers were once allowed to invent and tinker with their own whistles, and they worked out fancy ways of blowing them. This was called quilling. People along the tracks could tell who the engineer was by listening to the sound of his whistle. Some great quillers could even blow a sort of tune.

One engineer fixed his whistle so that people thought it was magic. Every time he blew it, the kerosene lights in the station went out! What happened was this: The whistle made vibrations in the air that were just right for putting out the lamps. But they did the same thing to signal lights, and so the engineer had to change his tune.

The first sleeping cars had rows of hard double-decker and even triple-decker bunks, with a stove at each end. Passengers brought their own blankets and pillows, and their own candles to see by. Nobody really slept much.

Trains were uncomfortable—even dangerous. But people needed them, and they were excited about them, too. All over the country men built new railroads as fast as they could. Each new company built as it pleased, and trains owned by one company didn’t run over another’s tracks. Of course, that meant you had to change trains often—wherever one railroad line stopped and another began. There were no railroad bridges over rivers, either. So you got off and took a ferry across.

One by one, men made inventions for trains, so that traveling became safer and more comfortable. Engines began to burn coal instead of wood. A piece of wire screen in the smokestack stopped the flying sparks, although cinders came through—and they still do to this very day. Coaches and sleepers had softer seats, but they were still noisy for a long time because they had wooden bodies that creaked while the wheels clattered along.

Thirsty travelers at first had to buy drinks from the water boy who walked back and forth through the train. Later, cars had a tank of water and one glass for everyone to use. The glass sat in a rack, and it had a round bottom so that it wouldn’t be of much use to a passenger who was tempted to steal it.

Lots of things about trains were different in the old days, but one thing was the same. They were just as much fun to ride in then as they are now.