Travel Tuesday: Never Before on Train

Manassas Journal
February 7, 1913

NEVER BEFORE ON TRAIN

Mrs. Susan Whitmer Makes First Trip on Cars from Harrisonburg to Nokesville

Mrs. Susan Whitmer, seventy years old, after driving several miles over muddy roads from her home in Milnesville, Augusta county, to Harrisonburg last week, she boarded, for the first time, a railway train for a hundred and twenty mile trip to Nokesville, this county, where her daughter, Mrs. N. Wise, who accompanied her, resides, and with whom she will spend the remainder of the winter.  Mrs. Whitmer came to Manassas on train No. 14 which gave her a little time to breathe easy, after her thrilling experience in winding around the curves in the Blue Ridge and Bull Run mountains behind a prancing steam horse, whose blood-curdling shrieks at the touch of Engineer Amos, was anything but comfortable to a novice in rapid transit.

She was also afforded an opportunity to see something of our town before she took the "second degree" in railway travel before reaching her destination.  When the conductor announced "All out for Nokesville," the good old lady doubtless felt relieved of the dreadful anxiety of what she had conceived to be a hazardous undertaking at her time of life.