Amen, Wallyworld, amen, and I think anyone who can remember the fifties at all got to see the very tail end of it. Sometime between 1900-1929 is the era I would pick and the resurgence of traffic on many lines during WWII would be the other part of it, when the railroads pressed all of their available equipment and manpower into the war effort and the secondary lines that saw increases in traffic of all sorts. Also, if you go with the era between 1920-29, you can also throw in the interurban systems that turned out to be like shooting stars.