Were the rooftop antennas on passenger cars used for music?
Who took care of broadcasting the music? The railroads? A local AM station?
If it was the railroads, did they have a network of stations that kept the music broadcasting for long distances?
I recently read that Canadian Broadcasting was originally started by the Canadian National to entertain passengers riding cross country on CN trains. AM radio stations transmitted from strategic locations along the railroad. Programming came from a central studio, as I recall.
I worked to Pacific Telephone & Telegraph and maintained several mobile radio telephones on SP observation business cars. These were pre-cell phone in 450 MHz fm band.
Have fun, Rob
In the US, a radio was common in a parlor or observation car on a top-line train from the mid-late 1920’s on. The railroads didn’t have their own stations, the radio would just be set to a local station in the area the train happened to be at that time. However some railroads did sponsor programs, for years the C&NW sponsored a music show in Chicago IIRC.
Remember that pre-WW2 there weren’t that many radio stations, so those that were “clear channel” 50,000 watt stations could be heard for quite a ways…especially at night. AM radio can travel for many hundreds of miles, but it’s harder to get far away stations now because there are so many stations that you get interference with the signal. Still, even today I can sometimes pick up WSM from Nashville here in the south suburbs of Minneapolis-St.Paul at night.
BTW stations back then were more “full service” than today, and would often carry soap operas, comedy shows and dramas, plus have programs with live music, like Glenn Miller’s program for Chesterfield cigarettes. The concept of “Top 40” all-music radio with DJ’s playing records on the air 24-7 didn’t become really common until maybe the early 1950’s as top radio shows like Jack Benny, Dragnet, You Bet Your Life etc. moved from radio to television.
In the 50s, companies such as UP used reel to reel tape decks to supply pre-recorded music in specific cars.
Some trains offered on-board telephone service, so the antenna may have been for that purpose.