#1920s travel

[bitletsanddrabbles]

But What If I Wasn't Rich?

Right. So. With revisions on Stolen Child going well, I've tried to start gearing up for my next big project, which is what I'd planned on working on this month. It's a very different tone - lots of zany hijinks with a group of idiots going through the jungles of India looking for biologically impossible flora - so I figured it shouldn't need too much in the way of research, especially since I'm avoiding politics like the plague. Don't know how much I'll manage, mind, since the only reason I can think of for Thomas's cousin to be in Bombay is military, but I'm pretty confident I can just say that and let my historically well informed audience fill in their own blanks while I concentrate on more important things, like cobras that spit hydrochloride acid at people*.

For all of that, though, I am having problems right off the bat with the research. Why? Because I need to get a disgraced-with-no-reference Thomas from Downton Abbey to Bombay, and I need to do it via a land route (or mostly at any rate), because he needs to start the whole thing off by crashing into someone in a train station. I suppose it could technically be at a port, but the train station just seems more likely given that the person in question is trying to get to the Congo.

This should not be difficult to figure out, right? A couple of Google** searches and you're done.

Well, not so much. When I search for how to get from England to India in 1920, the search engines seem to think I'm curious about immigration in the late 1800s. The closest I've come is an article that outlines the sea route around Cape Horn that was utilized the early 1900s...and stops there.

There was one (1) Reddit thread that popped up from someone with a similar problem who had the route mostly mapped but was just missing a bit in the middle. It started with the Orient Express.

Okay! Time to look up the Orient Express! And we get...

An absolute ton of information on the very big, very famous luxury liner of trains! Yes'sir, the Orient Express got you from Paris to Istanbul in style like you wouldn't believe! All of the rich people were lining up to bask in the lap of luxury as they made this cross land trip!

...

...which was probably beyond the budget of a newly sacked valet...

Pretty certain.

So we start looking for other ways to get from Paris to Istanbul in 1920 and apparently you could...walk? Or something? Maybe hitch hike?

Yeah, there's nothing. I can not come up with a search that does not tell me about the Orient Express, but unless Thomas ties himself to the roof, I don't see him getting aboard that one.

So! Are there any travel experts out there who have insight? Or people who have faced this issue in their fanfiction? Researchers with a hyper fixation on Agatha Christie? Banana cream pie? I'm kinda hungry, I could go in for some banana cream pie.

Heck, I'd settle for a less politically volatile reason for Thomas's cousin to be in residence, although I'm going to have to at least touch on the BEF*** for plot reasons.

*our fauna is as biologically impossible as our fauna

**or, well, Duckduckgo, but that doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely

***at least I assume that's who was stationed there. Again really, really not interested in politics. At all. Ever. Plague on the planet.

[nemfrog]

An elf's ride through space on horseback. Down-adown-derry. 1922.

Internet Archive

[vintagecamping]

Canoeing in Forty Mile Creek.

Banff, Alberta

1925

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Art Deco poster for the Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen line sailing from Europe to America, 1925.

Photo: Alamy

[vintagepromotions]

Travel poster for the East Sussex towns of Hastings and St. Leonards (c. 1920). Artwork by Elijah Albert Cox.

[mensministry]

Borgo San Pietro’s Satori yacht

Stuart Pearce Photography

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 66: 20th Century and Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

People suggested a lot of different ones. Feel free to put your favorite in the notes. There was no consensus as to which in the first round, and by the time I realized I should do a separate poll it was far, far too late and it would have taken hours to go through all the notes. If you suggest enough, I'll make one now.

[baaardi]

Bogotá, Colombia. Julio 2024

RETO Ultrawide, Kodak 400

[annagaw]

Dramione Time Travel: 1920s Edition

Oh you thought flappers for the 20s? Absolutely not, we are going sailor blouses, or we are going home.

And we’re continuing the trend of putting Draco in nonsense trousers.

edit 22/07: there was something off about Hermione in the og version, she wasn’t looking quite right - so I fixed it and have replaced it completely with the version above! This is what I get for colouring at 3am, instead of reading fanfiction at 3am like a normal healthy adult!

[lights-at-night]

i might be shot but tbh i think fiction podcasts have an issue with racial representation

[stone-cold-groove]

Southern Pacific Railroad travel poster. Yosemite - 1923.

[curiouscatalog]

To get in the spooky season mood.

From: U.S. 40 : National Old Trails Road. Winchester, Va. : Registered Service International, 1929?

HE356.C8 U4 1929

[vintageeurope]

Perast, Montenegro 1920

[vintagecamping]

Yosemite National Park Road Map

California

1928

[vintagepromotions]

Travel poster showing off the redecorated and refurnished Charing Cross Hotel and Restaurant (now The Clermont) (c. 1920). Design by McCorquodale Studio.

[shamyzn]

Hey, Ulrich-

It is me, Hannah.

I know that you are locked away in prison 66 years in the past for a crime you did not commit, you still do not know where your son is, you haven't seen your family in over a year, you are gradually losing your sanity and last time we talked you were a bit upset because I wouldn't leave you alone and because, out of jealousy, I falsely reported you for raping someone or whatever, but would you still love me if I was a worm?