Interesting facts and notes in old railroad magazines

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Re a train barber shop, the few routes out west that had those ran on smooth track even though it was not continuous welded rail. The maintenance of course was excellent.
Besides NY Central, other roads such as the B&O also had all-Pullman (The Capitol Limited) and all-coach (The Columbian) trains from the East (NY or DC) to Chicago as well as trains with both. On the PRR the overnight train The General (second only to the Broadway in 1962 when I rode) had plenty of Pullmans and coaches, and then there were the various slower NY-Chicago PRR trains such as The Manhattan Limited. The Golden Triangle was PRR's Pittsburgh to Chicago overnighter and the Pittsburgher was overnight to NY but was all-Pullman (but into the 1950s or even beyond, all passengers had both day & night choices among the various trains, with parlor cars for daytime first-class).
The fabulous Go Pullman pamphlet shows a fixed ladder in place for the Section upper berth but that was a late amenity. Normally the porter had to bring the ladder to each upper berth or a (at least tall spry) passenger could get up there on his own. (In 1959 on the Olympian Hiawatha lower-cost "Tour-a-Lux" 16-section sleeper I did it both with and without.) The pamphlet's depiction of men's and ladies' restrooms were for cars with 10 or more Sections (not for the later & fairly common 6 Sec.-6 Rmte-4 Bedroom cars, or the Canadian's cars with 4 Sections or now 3 with a shower room for the whole sleeper replacing one Section. The PRR by the late 1950s had no Sections so after 1971 with Amtrak when I went from Pittsburgh to Chicago the conductor & trainman I overheard remarking that they'd not see those for years (there were a few Sections in the next car to ours).
My favorite car names were IL Central's 6-6-4 sleepers with names like Banana Road, King Cotton, Land O' Strawberries, Petroleum, and Prairie State. PRR's 12 duplex room, 4 bedroom cars were named Cascade Pond, Cascade Pool, etc., etc. but one was Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816, a noted Pennsylvanian).
 
Re a train barber shop, the few routes out west that had those ran on smooth track even though it was not continuous welded rail. The maintenance of course was excellent.
Besides NY Central, .........................................
My favorite car names were IL Central's 6-6-4 sleepers with names like Banana Road, King Cotton, Land O' Strawberries, Petroleum, and Prairie State. PRR's 12 duplex room, 4 bedroom cars were named Cascade Pond, Cascade Pool, etc., etc. but one was Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816, a noted Pennsylvanian).
My then wife's favorite Amtrak sleeper name in the Heritage fleet was "Blue Mott." After I explained how cars were named in series, she wanted to know if it was in the Blue series or the Mott series.

Here's my favorite, seen in the Portland Pullman yard north of Union Station in the late 1960's. "Rambler Rose" was a tramp Pullman.
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And here's a Terminal Company switcher bringing the cars for UP Train 106, the City of Portland, down from the yard to Union Station. It will be spotted perfectly across the high-shed walkway with a dome car framed by the lesser trains on each side.
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My all time favorite-named Pullman car was the PRR "Silver Rapids". It was PRR's sole contribution to the California Zephyr pool with the Burlington, Rio Grande, and Western Pacific. It was a Budd built, stainless steel, 10 Roomette, 6 Double Bedroom sleeper. It's name brilliantly combined the "Silver" prefix common to all CZ cars, and the "Rapids" suffix common to PRR 10-6 sleepers. PRR was in the pool due to the at the time transcontinental sleeper pool.
The car is a survivor of Amtrak service, and still goes on, now in private ownership...

https://www.calzephyrrailcar.com/silver-fleet/silver-rapids.html
https://www.californiazephyr.org/exhibits/equipment/coaches/10-6/rapids/
 
It's name brilliantly combined the "Silver" prefix common to all CZ cars, and the "Rapids" suffix common to PRR 10-6 sleepers.
The naming of Pullman cars I always found fascinating. PRR 10-5 sleepers (prewar with no closet for the toilet) were in the ‘Cascade’ series. What to make of ‘Cascade Rapids’ that I saw on PRR’s Northern Express in Washington heading to Buffalo?
 
I sure wish I could have experienced the glory years of the all-Pullman trains. Problem is, if that could have happened I would (likely) be dead now. 😂
Yeah, you pretty much have to be at least 75-plus to remember that era, and for that matter, you probably need to be 60-plus to remember the pre-Amtrak era at all. I'm in the latter group but not the former.
 
Trains January 1943. Page 38 "$72,000 a Day."

That is the ticket sales of Washington Union Station on average per day at least for the month of July 1942. On a good Saturday or Sunday 130,000 persons to pass through the station (and most are not commuters.)

I wonder what ticket sales are now and how that compares when taking inflation into account. I wonder what MARC and VRE add to those amounts.
 
Trains January 1943. Page 38 "$72,000 a Day."

That is the ticket sales of Washington Union Station on average per day at least for the month of July 1942. On a good Saturday or Sunday 130,000 persons to pass through the station (and most are not commuters.)

I wonder what ticket sales are now and how that compares when taking inflation into account. I wonder what MARC and VRE add to those amounts.
That's an interesting statistic, thank you, McL! I wonder how the huge numbers of soldiers and essential civilians thronging Union Station affected those numbers. (Did soldiers, traveling "on orders," buy tickets? Did the War Department, as it was then known, buy them in bulk? Or issue some kind of special "scrip?" I dunno.)

Your statistic is just a few months after my friend Ed's mom, a "government girl," arrived in Union Station on her first-ever trip east of the Rockies in March 1942 (thread at https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...vernment-girl-take-in-1942.80686/#post-936497) and eight months before my Uncle Rudy passed through on his way to MD and NC and OK and ultimately to Europe and the Battle of the Bulge (see https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...-present-and-future.83937/page-4#post-1026056).
 
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That's an interesting statistic, thank you, McL! I wonder how the huge numbers of soldiers and essential civilians thronging Union Station affected those numbers. (Did soldiers, traveling "on orders," buy tickets? Did the War Department, as it was then known, buy them in bulk? Or issue some kind of special "scrip?" I dunno.)

Your statistic is just a few months after my friend Ed's mom, a "government girl," arrived in Union Station on her first-ever trip east of the Rockies in March 1942 (thread at https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...vernment-girl-take-in-1942.80686/#post-936497) and eight months before my Uncle Rudy passed through on his way to MD and NC and OK and ultimately to Europe and the Battle of the Bulge (see https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...-present-and-future.83937/page-4#post-1026056).
On the Great American Stations webpage has WAS ticket sales listed as Annual Ticket Revenue (FY 2023): $506,331,328, which is $1,387,209 per day.

Using https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=72000&year=1943 then $72,000 is worth $1,264,461 in 2023. I don't have stats for VRE or MARC, which would add to the value of ticket sales at Union Station. And I am not sure how Amtrak gets the 2023 figures. I think they allocate 1/2 the money to the originating station and 1/2 to the ending station. The flip would also be true for heading into WAS. The article implies this is only ticket sales at Union Station so we may or may not be comparing apples to oranges.
 
That's an interesting statistic, thank you, McL! I wonder how the huge numbers of soldiers and essential civilians thronging Union Station affected those numbers. (Did soldiers, traveling "on orders," buy tickets? Did the War Department, as it was then known, buy them in bulk? Or issue some kind of special "scrip?" I dunno.)

Your statistic is just a few months after my friend Ed's mom, a "government girl," arrived in Union Station on her first-ever trip east of the Rockies in March 1942 (thread at https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...vernment-girl-take-in-1942.80686/#post-936497) and eight months before my Uncle Rudy passed through on his way to MD and NC and OK and ultimately to Europe and the Battle of the Bulge (see https://www.amtraktrains.com/thread...-present-and-future.83937/page-4#post-1026056).
I'm not certain, but I believe there were two ways on regular trains that military travel was handled. A GTR, Government Travel Request, was issued for groups. The highest-ranking member of the group was designated as the group leader. The GTR would be accepted by the ticket clerk as a voucher for a group ticket. Individual travel would be reimbursed in advance by a mileage payment. When the Army sent me from Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN to Fort Dix NJ the money would have paid for a lower berth, but I went coach and used the savings to help with expenses for a week in NYC.
 
I'm not certain, but I believe there were two ways on regular trains that military travel was handled. A GTR, Government Travel Request, was issued for groups. The highest-ranking member of the group was designated as the group leader. The GTR would be accepted by the ticket clerk as a voucher for a group ticket. Individual travel would be reimbursed in advance by a mileage payment. When the Army sent me from Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN to Fort Dix NJ the money would have paid for a lower berth, but I went coach and used the savings to help with expenses for a week in NYC.
Modern day equivalent of working a per diem by eating cheap and saving the money.
 
Trains December 1943, an article on the Passenger conductor.

1. The conductor is in charge of the train and its crew.
2. The safe movement of passengers to destinations is the conductor's principal consideration. (Mr. Adams has been a conductor since 1902 and has never had a fatality on his trains.)
3. He must look after the comfort and well-being of all passengers. (As Conductor Adams pointed out, "I try to treat them all alike, and satisfy all of them, too.")
4. He must take up tickets, getting proper transportation, whether cash fares, tickets, or passes. He sorts all tickets and, with phenomenal memory, knows most of the time where each passenger is sitting and at what station each is to leave the train. The tickets are sent to the
auditor-of-revenues department, where they must again be sorted and classified. (Interesting sidelight: Conductors must, on many occasions, remember sleeping-car passengers and see that they get off at the proper stations. This is done without disturbing other patrons.)
5. He must notify the crew of all flag stops.
6. He must watch signals at telegraph offices to make certain the train stops when the operator has orders.
7. He must handle train orders. The conductor and engineer each get a copy so that they may work in harmony in operating the train. The conductor instructs his crew to read orders and everything else pertaining to correct movement of the train.
8. He must assist people on and off the train.
9. He must register before starting the train, when arriving at the terminal, and at certain designated stops along the way.
10. He must watch the conduct of passengers as to safety and as to comfort of other patrons of the train.

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How long would the list be now. And to thank that Mr. Adams might have been born in the 1870s and certainly the 1880s. The amount of changes in his life and he might have lived to see humans walk on the moon.
 
For Washington Union Station during the war, see the 37 photographs by Gordon Parks here: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/coll/item/2004667446/

As background, maybe this is common knowledge, but it was new to me: https://www.american-rails.com/world.html
As historian John Stover notes in his book, "The Routledge Historical Atlas Of The American Railroads," railroads did not want a repeat of World War I.

They were quite eager to cooperate with the government and avoid federal control. (This did occur briefly when labor disputes led to a two-month takeover between December, 1943 and January, 1944.)
 

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Trains April 1945 has a note about new timetables on the B&M. Does anyone have a before and after to post?

New B&M Timetable
People who for years have
maintained that no one can
possibly understand a rail
road timetable will be pleased
with the new timetable of die
Boston & Maine, an entirely
new departure in both typo
graphy and arrangement of
schedules. It is the result of
more than two years research
by a group of typographical
experts headed by Professor
Ray Nash of Dartmouth. The
traditional gothic timetable type has
been discarded for a very legible
face such as used in advertising
and publication work. The page
makeup is much more inviting to
the eye, with elimination of the
many heavy lines which used to
separate schedules. Mileage fig
ures have been placed in the out
side column, to bring train times
closer to the stations. Connec
tions and through services are
shown in the logical position in
the table instead of relegated to
the rear. Reference notes and
other incidental information is
readily found close to the schedule
affected. The folder is finished by
a back page of cartoons showing
how to use the timetable, an idea
similar to newspaper advertise
ments run by the B&M last July
 
Trains April 1946 on page 36 this is a great illustration of the passenger stations on Manhattan island. I could post a picture if desired but mostly want to mention this and those with access can go right to it.
McLeansvilleAppFan:
I love that Amtrak is full of union employees. And I hope to live to see Amtrak to Asheville, NC and Wilmington, NC.

Yes unions are a necessary evil to keep rouge senior management from derailing the train - - -
But still yet they throw (financial) switches every which way to do just that.

Now as for that Amtrak train between Asheville to Wilmington while not cutting across through over the
scenic Appalachian mountains would be a very interesting diverse route between the two cities
no doubt even more scenic in the autumn of the year.
Then again Amtrak is not interested in scenic trips - - - this won't sell in Peoria or Wall Street
 
McLeansvilleAppFan:
I love that Amtrak is full of union employees. And I hope to live to see Amtrak to Asheville, NC and Wilmington, NC.

Yes unions are a necessary evil to keep rouge senior management from derailing the train - - -
But still yet they throw (financial) switches every which way to do just that.

Now as for that Amtrak train between Asheville to Wilmington while not cutting across through over the
scenic Appalachian mountains would be a very interesting diverse route between the two cities
no doubt even more scenic in the autumn of the year.
I Then again Amtrak is not interested in scenic trips - - - this won't sell in Peoria or Wall Street
Asheville and Wilmington will both be funded by NC itself just as the Piedmont is now. The Asheville trip will be Asheville to Salisbury, though a complete mountain to the sea would be great! Wilmington will be Raleigh-Wilmington. Connecting those will be the Carolinian and Piedmont trains. I would love to see the the Asheville train start in Greensboro (I am biased) and run over to Winston-Salem and then to Barber Jct. That might kill any riders from Charlotte but it would open up some more communities large and small to Amtrak as well, though not enough to offset Charlotte ridership loses I imagine.

And "Yes unions are a necessary." is about all that needs to be said.
 
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