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For this week's Sepia Saturday I'm reposting a photo I've posted before - as far back as ten years ago, for Sepia Saturday 182. I'm also reusing my text from back then, with a few minor adjustments.
The building is the railway station at Fristad (where my grandparents grew up and also lived the rest of their lives). In the early years (not sure for how long) it also served as post office, from where postmen and postcoaches delivered the post around the village and surrounding countryside.
My great grandfather Samuel (while also being a farmer) used to drive a postal coach between the railway station and a country store in a smaller village. According to family stories, that's where he, as 60+ year old widower and father of nine (two of whom had died at a young age), in the late 1890's, met his second wife – my great-grandmother Selma (then a young widow with one young daughter, Hildur). Together, the two of them had two more children: My grandmother Sally, born 1900 (the same year the "new" station house in the photo was built) and her brother Nils, born 1902.
Samuel retired in 1903, and then his oldest son Carl took over the task of driving the post as well as the running of the farm. (I know this from an article that my father's cousin once wrote for the local history society's annual magazine.) I think it may be Carl on the wagon to the right (not in a uniform), but I'm not sure. (He died in 1928.) I also think that if this photo is from the mid 1920s, the photographer may have been my grandfather, for some newspaper article. (Just a guess, though.)
Anyway, the photo shows a time when postal service was taken seriously!
This postcard from the same station may also have been included in some previous post, but I'm including it again, as it also shows a train, and people. It's a reprint of an old postcard, for a railway jubilée (150 years) in 2013.
My father, a railway enthusiast who even published books on local railways, died in 2011; but in 2013, my brother and I had not yet sold the house in the village (where our grandparents lived, and then our parents in their retirement years), and in honour of our dad, we attended that railway jubilée. So here are some photos from that occasion:
Linking to Sepia Saturday 656 - Trains
A nice link to the train theme of this week's prompt. Train engines are pretty much universal, but sometimes the cars look different from country to country and it's interesting to note the difference. :)
ReplyDeleteLaN, I'm sure my father whould have been able to expand on that in length, but I'm afraid I've not really inherited his eye for those details! ;-)
DeleteYour post reminded me of a train trip I took in Norway in 1981. I must have a journal entry of that too. But, alas, no photographs. It's sort of amazing how the prompts come around every ten years! :)
ReplyDeleteKristin, I'd say it's inevitable that themes have to be recycled every now and then! ;-)
DeleteIt's interesting to see how a train station became the hub of a community. Between postal service, shipping, and regular passengers a small station like Fristad had more activity year round than any other place in town. It meant people encountered each other far more often than in our modern times. That kind of hub is missing in communities today. For instance, back in the day watches and clocks were set to the railway clock. But I've never seen a 24 hour clock like one at Fristad. I also liked seeing the front snow blades on the locomotive. Very necessary in Sweden.
ReplyDeleteMike, railway stations nowadays seem to have become rather impersonal, with everything automatised. I don't even know how to book a ticket these days (it's been a while since I last had reason to try), except that one is probably supposed to do it online. Possibly they also still have some ticket machine at the station for the local trains. All I know is that there is no proper "ticket office" any more!
DeleteLoved seeing these trains. I wonder, though, why if there was a steam engine, there were also overhead wires. Perhaps electric powered trains also ran on the same tracks?
ReplyDeleteBarbara, if you look at the b&w postcard (from perhaps 1913 or so) there were no overhead wires back then. The colour photos are from 2013, and the steam engine was only there then for the railway jubilée. It's otherwise still a working railway with modern trains running daily. No staff at the railway station any more, though; and the post office is located elsewhere, too.
DeleteA lovely post with great photographs, linking family history with local history.
ReplyDelete