The little-known history of 20th-century railroad chapels

[Michie]

There was a time when thousands of rural American Christians could access weekly church services that arrived by train.​

America owes much of its expansion during the late 19th century to the invention and development of the railroad network. Cities started to sprout in previously sparsely inhabited locations as each block of the great American railway was built. This new means of transportation not only revolutionized America’s landscape, it also changed the way people could attend church services.


Suddenly, rail networks allowed Catholics living in remote locations to travel to larger cities to attend church, and some pioneering priests went a step further. In order to ensure that people living even in the most remote of locations could attend Mass, they created “railroad chapels.”

As explained by Wilma Taylor and Norman Taylor in the article “The Story of Americas Chapel Cars,” published in the journal Railroad History and cited by Jstor Daily, these railroad chapels traveled from town to town to provide church services to communities that were too small to have a dedicated place of worship.

Continued below.

The little-known history of 20th-century railroad chapels

There was a time when thousands of rural American Christians could access weekly church services that arrived by train.

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