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What a disappointment.
So American
Only country in the world to regress this much in transportation infrastructure.
But, hey! We were able to transerfer $50 TRILLION to the top 1% from '75 to 2018!
Its not the 1800s anymore. We built interstates and planes to get people and products to more places and faster.
I'm sure the train lovers will all go for Amazon Train delivery and get their stuff in 4-6 weeks though.
Europe and most other countries are also moving more towards busses than trains as well.
“Europe and most other countries” are not doing anything of the kind.
Cars don’t get people places faster though… and we use cargo trains all of the time in this country, having one of the most extensive systems on earth.
The 1962 "remodeling" of the old Main St. Sears that covered up the Art Deco architecture with metal cladding.
Didn't Houston have a Union Station as well, and it is now part of Minute Maid ballpark?
This is correct, the main difference between the stations was that Grand Central was for Southern Pacific and Union was for multiple railroads such as Santa Fe, Missouri Pacific, Rock Island and Burlington.
There was also a station for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad that was around where UHD is today. Though I believe it closed prior to Grand Central. If you’re familiar with the MKT trail in the Heights it got its name from the railroad.
Also, Katy, Texas got its name from the MKT railroad. Katy was a stop along the MKT rail line. The MKT Railroad dropped its Missouri waypoint and the junction became known as the KT stop.
That's super interesting. Love learning historical facts like this. Had no idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri%E2%80%93Kansas%E2%80%93Texas_Railroad
There is a cute, converted bungalow in the Heights, Cortlandt at 7thm that was a small early MKT rail station.
converted rail station in Heights
Awesome find. Looking at the satellite imaging you can sort of envision the concrete pad in the backyard being where a water tank goes
There was a time when well water was plentiful in the Heights, before Houston city water that led to wells being capped.
Oh wow! I jog by there every once and awhile and had no idea. How cool.
TIL. I assumed it was a “hip” way to call it “Market” Trail
Me too… I thought it was a stupid name lol
Also there was a Southern Pacific hospital. My dad had me drive him by it last time he visited, pretty brick work.
Nice, that’s the real joy of this thread for me is the railroad history nuggets being dropped
Before the naming rights went to Enron it was called The Ball Park at Union Station or The B.U.S.
Yes
We used to build shit
We used to build good shit. Now we just build shit.
Builders can build good shit. People just don't want to pay for good shit.
Nobody wants to pay for one good thing when they can buy 12 super cheap crappy things at Walmart.
Too true
There is a China to Walmart to Consumer to Landfill pipeline for cheap crap. We would all be better off if the supply chain was shortened to a direct China to Landfill system.
The advantages of cheap modern stuff is that its fast to build and much easier to maintain.
Old brick and stone structures are incredibly harder to maintain, and so many were heavily degraded by acid rain decades ago.
Glass skyscrapers might look boring but all they need is washing and new windows and seals every decade or two.
Now we just stick our hand in the next guy's pocket
People used to take the train. As did the mail and most of the cargo.
This is upsetting
Astroworld to parking lot
Fitzgeralds to parking lot.
What's so infuriating about Fitzgerald's was that they had offers to keep the club going. It's not like Astroworld which was a steady decline over the years. The club was successful and it could have stayed that way under newer ownership. But a parking lot firm got the highest bid, and so ownership got their 30 pieces of silver.
My best memories from highschool a parking lot. It's so Houston
This was my first thought as well
To be fair when I moved to Houston in 2003 I went to Astroworld and 3 different rides closed multiple times while in line with maintenance issues. I dunno much about Astroworld but I know it was loved. I would have loved to go in its prime but it was kind of shitty from what I remember although it was at the end of its run by then.
Our senior 2000 skip day lined up with Physics Phun fest at Astroworld. 4 hour bus ride each way and we had a blast! Our teacher was cool and told us to have fun, while other schools had their students do a bunch of experiments.
We lost a lot of coins studying gravity on the freefall ride haha.
paved over paradise
Possibly the Astrodome -> Parking Lot?
Crazy that this beautiful building only lasted about 25 years. Looks like it was built where Post is now.
Shame they couldn’t turn it into the Post Office instead of tearing it down.
This is correct.
so the old post office (now POST) is where this used to stand?
Post is a modern shit stain on the city. Great idea, horrible execution.
Reddit always says this, and I do see why, but if you talk to most non-online people they think it's fantastic. Took a couple of people who had never been last week and they couldn't stop talking about how they couldn't wait to go back.
Yeah, normie central. It’s the gentrification pocket of houston. Enjoy houston TikTok businesses in a building with no soul.
And now we have POST Houston, which sits where Houston Grand Central Station used to sit.
Honestly make Post the train station
Seriously. Wouldn’t even have to move the tracks! Just take down the fences and remove some parking for a walkway.
This is actually an awesome idea
I picked up a cousin once who was traveling to Houston via train from LA. I had never been to the Amtrak station before that, and as I pulled up I couldn't believe the little white building and how terrible it looked. The city of Houston, the fourth largest in the country, with what looked like a trailer park for a station.
Mind you, the city of Houston's official seal has a fucking TRAIN on the front.
I don't think our Amtrak station looks like a trailer park. A trailer park is much larger and has more facilities than our Amtrak station. What we have is the equivalent of a shack somewhere deep in rural Japan where trains infrequently stop, but dirty.
🙍♂️
This is better than many places. Between Kansas City Missouri and Chicago, most of the Amtrak stations are temporary buildings that resemble a Conex shipping container.
Houston's turn of the century trolley system that ran throughout Houston at that time.
The car culture moved in for good.
That building no longer existing has to do with people traveling more by plane than cross county train.
People get anxiety if a package takes more than 2 days to deliver now. Good luck seeing them take a train for a day or two versus flying for a few hours.
Airplanes and interstates move everything and everybody around incredibly faster.
That’s only really true in some situations though.
Sure, nothing beats an airplane once you’re in the air, but the need to travel to the airport (often located far from where any actual stuff is because almost nobody wants to live next to an airport), check in/drop bags/pass through security, arrive at the gate with an hour to spare (because airports are so goddamn busy), board everybody through one door (or two if you’re lucky!), taxi and takeoff, and then do it all again on the other side will add hours onto the trip. It may be worth it if you’re flying across the country, but if you want to fly from Houston to Dallas, it really doesn’t matter if the plane gets you there in 45 minutes if you have to spend 4 hours getting to and from the plane.
Compare that to showing up at a train station in downtown, swiping in, then leaving, an hour and a half spent on the train doesn’t seem too bad after all.
Yeah. People driving to New York is why the train died….
/s
Traveling by train in the S.W. or West in general has never been practical. One could argue that due to this , it helped propel auto usage.
Apparently Houston used to have like 3 grand Egyptian theatres in downtown and they're all random office buildings now. such a pity
Downtown also used to have factories, refineries, and tons of polluting industry too.
They did have cool stuff too but I doubt any of us would have wanted to stay there long.
Damn what a shame
brought to you by lobbyist
Now compare the land in 1930 to IAH today. That comparison will tell the story of what happened to travel by rail and how Houston evolved.
PS: I would've preferred demolition of the old Post building to the old Grand Central, with its period architecture and the nostalgic place where I arrived at Houston originally.
You can thank all the Oil and Gas companies for the atrocities we have to deal with on todays roads. Public transport should be our focus but instead we just add more and more concrete and then wonder why it’s 101 all summer.
Just one more lane, bro. It'll fix traffic this time, I swear
Or Better, let’s create 2 HOV lanes that require the space of 5, make it prohibitively expensive and accessible only to the wealthy and the send all the profits overseas. This is the new Texas Way.
We gotta vote Abbott out. And Patrick and Paxton, and Cruz, and Cornyn. The Republicans only care about corporate interests and who is donating the most money. Shameful.
It's like fixing obesity by loosening the belt
Texas ain’t fat, its fluffy lmao
Yeah we are so far behind any other country that might spend a pittance of what we do on road building and maintenance. Houston ought to have multiple trains a day to NOLA, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas.
Actually you should blame GM. Houston and its suburbs had a very healthy interurban system. It was slowly bought out and shut down.
Houston is Robert Moses' wet dream.
Where’s the dude saying it’s racism that ended this 🤡
Sure beats waiting around in a downpour or heat for the whims of a driver. Some people enjoy the luxury and freedom of having their own car. Pouring concrete isn't whats making it hotter. This must be the lament for the bicyclist and public transportation that is posted every week. Thos darn parking lots!
You're just wrong about concrete not making it hotter.
The urban heat island effect is a well documented, researched, and provable fact.
If your only option for getting anywhere you need to go is to use a car to get there, is that really freedom?
The option is more freedom
Ahhh the sweet sweet freedom of being stuck in traffic.
Concrete also has higher solar reflectance than grass. This means that when solar heat hits concrete, more heat is reflected back, making the surroundings hotter. This can create a phenomenon called urban heat islands, where cities get much hotter than rural areas.
^ It's one of the reasons, along with all the pollution from all the corporations here and all the vehicles. But hey, science is for losers.
Concrete wasn't around everywhere in 1940 and Houston was still hot as hell.
Record high in 1940 was 99. RECORD HIGH. That was even in September. Meaning all throughout August in 1940 it was less than that. You remember a day in August less than 100 in the last decade? I don't.
--- Houston logged 45 days of triple-digit temperatures in 2023, coming up one day shy of the all-time record of 46 set in 2011. The last time city temperatures hit 100 degrees or more was on Sept. 8. <----- It sure seems like it's been getting hotter to me.
Are you not aware that most of this is solved in other countries?
I don't live in other countries
"I have no curiosity" - You
Side fact -The old southern pacific building in downtown is now the bayou lofts
The one before the 1930 one was even more grand.
I know O & G is getting a lot of blame for this, but let’s not overlook that the railroad companies are private entities that just decided that Americans don’t need trains as an option for intercity transportation anymore. They could have competed with the airlines for better service on certain routes but decided not to.
The companies and more importantly the market.
I'm a fan of the old inter-city rail system, there's nothing I'd want to do more than travel back to the 40s, buy a ticket, and enjoy a cross country journey in my sleeper compartment while passing the days watching the landscape go by in the observation car.
My dad, on the other hand, who grew up in the 40s in the upper midwest where you had to use a train for any travel over about 30 miles, thought I was nuts. He explained to me that the tickets on the nice trains were hugely expensive (looking at some old tables and adjusting for inflation, he was right). He thought most trains were absolute dumps (especially into the 1960s), were slow, it was a miserable experience, and after airplanes were available he never looked back.
He related to me after he got out of basic training at Parris Island in 1960 the Marines put him on a train, and a neighbor from his home town on a bus. Besides having to walk across half a mile of open snow at the Illinois Central yard in Chicago to switch trains, the bus beat him by a day. He was not at all surprised when the rail companies bailed out of passenger service in 1971.
Exactly this. So many people ignore the truth about how rail was and why people moved on to better and faster alternatives.
Train travel wasnt always the grand times you see in movies.
Coming from a poorer country in Europe, train bathrooms were so damn filthy and you saw the tracks straight down. Be thankful for cars and Buccees!