Zephyr, Meet Ox Cart — 1936
by Paula Bosse
…Ox cart, meet Zephyr
by Paula Bosse
On Oct. 4, 1936, the Sam Houston Zephyr — the very first streamlined passenger train in Texas — made one of it very first public appearances, at the Texas Centennial in Dallas. This beautiful train (check out a photo of its interior here) was operated by the Burlington-Rock Island railroad between Fort Worth and Houston, with stops in Dallas, Waxahachie, Corsicana, and Teague. (See footage of it arriving it what might be Dallas in what might be 1936 in cool home movie footage here — then go to the beginning to see great Centennial footage — some of it in color! — and other footage shot in Kidd Springs.)
Back to the Zephyr. At its Centennial stop, a photo-op presented itself: the super-new (Zephyr) alongside the super-old (an ox cart). This photo ran in newspapers around the world, accompanied by variations of the following captions:
PROGRESS! Just a zephyr in the breeze is the Burlington Zephyr, particularly when compared to an ancient ox cart. The two were shown together at the Texas centennial fair at Dallas. The speedy streamliner runs from Dallas to Houston, Texas.
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MARCH OF PROGRESS. An excellent contrast in the modes of transportation of today and yesterday is presented here as the Sam Houston Zephyr, streamlined train running between Dallas, Tex., and Houston, enters the grounds of the Texas Centennial exposition with an ox cart plodding along beside it. The presentation is part of the Cavalcade of Texas given at the exposition in Dallas. The girls are LaNeyl Brown and Peggy Humphreys.
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From a Dallas Morning News article on the Centennial exhibit at Fair Park:
The streamlined Sam Houston Zephyr, operated between Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston by the Burlington-Rock Island, will be displayed on the siding in the grounds east of the Hall of Transportation. One of the powerful Opp Mogul freight engines of the Texas & Pacific also will be shown. To furnish a contrast with modern and ancient transportation the ox cart and stagecoach used in Cavalcade will be rolled out. (DMN, Oct. 4, 1936)
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An interesting sidelight regarding the older modes of transportation is this blurb about the difficulty Centennial personnel had in finding authentic stagecoaches, covered wagons, and ox carts to use in various Fair Park productions celebrating the history of Texas, forcing them to resort to building reproductions (seems hard to believe that there were only two authentic stagecoaches to be found in the entire state!):
AP wire story, May 1936
The article is referring to props needed for the giant Cavalcade of Texas historical pageant, but check out the nice little novelty “prairie schooner” below, which served as a quirky, casual Centennial restaurant (“Smacking of the old West is the Chuck Wagon, a dining place for 250, with an overgrown chuck wagon serving as the kitchen and service counter” — Dallas Morning News, June 7, 1936):
Dallas Historical Society
via Worthpoint
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Sources & Notes
Top photo was found on eBay (German wire photo).
Photo of the Chuck Wagon restaurant is from the Texas Centennial Exposition Collection, Dallas Historical Society, Object ID V.38.3.245 — more info on this photo is here.
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Copyright © 2024 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
That video is great. I’m pretty sure that is Union Station. As the train arrives you can see people coming down stairs on the right and an overhead truss spanning the tracks to the left of the train. In this crop from a 1936 aerial you can see the truss and the stairs coming down from the overhead platform access structure:
Based on the 1936 Illinois license plate on the car of George R. Chester and what appears to be his wife and teenage son at the Centennial, I think there is a chance that the George R. Chester living with his wife, Ethel, and 17 year old son, Edward, as shown in the 1940 Chicago census might be the same George R. Chester mentioned in the video. I also found a Robert McElhiney and his wife, Frances, (and no children) living on Lovers Lane in University Park in the 1940 census. According to the census both families were living in Chicago in 1935.
Of course without any other corroborating details I can’t say with any certainty that those are the same families that are related to the video. I also can’t tell if Robert McElhiney is the man called Mac in the first part of the video or somebody else like the man walking towards the camera in the Kidd Springs segment.
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Wow, that’s a lot of detective work.
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