Interesting facts and notes in old railroad magazines

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Trains January 1947. Interesting article on page 4 about branch line passenger service. To think the amount of trains back then and they were past the WWII bump and they were discussing BRANCH line passenger service. How many main lines do not have passenger service now?
To think of all branch lines all over the country that had passenger service (and freight) are no longer - even the
rails the freight traffic was on have been ripped up and made into recreational trails. Not all that bad though
keeping some of the rail right of way open for future development. The buses filled in the void briefly but the car has taken over - AND - until the rural landscape becomes high rise apartments rail will not be coming back any
time soon (if at all). Oh and air service will be limited soon - tooo much stuff in air space results in gridlock !

It would be an interesting statistic the amount of Amtrak rail coverage versus what was in times past - - - - -
 
To think of all branch lines all over the country that had passenger service (and freight) are no longer - even the
rails the freight traffic was on have been ripped up and made into recreational trails. Not all that bad though
keeping some of the rail right of way open for future development. The buses filled in the void briefly but the car has taken over - AND - until the rural landscape becomes high rise apartments rail will not be coming back any
time soon (if at all). Oh and air service will be limited soon - tooo much stuff in air space results in gridlock !

It would be an interesting statistic the amount of Amtrak rail coverage versus what was in times past - - - - -
Rail was the only way to go in the 1890s. CNN says Amtrak runs on 21,400 miles in 2023. How Stuff Works says the peak for all railroad mileage in the US was in 1916, when it was 254,000, a number CNN also states. The resurgence of intercity rail travel in WWII, partly due to gas rationing, was followed by a steep decline. Considering how the population has concentrated in cities and suburbs, you'd have to count commuter rail and transit now, though, to be fair. Look at how undersized New York Penn Station is at track level. Then again 254,000 miles, how much ever passenger, was for a much smaller population.

When Los Angeles built that first subway in 1990, it was like, what, public transit in L.A.? Since then many places in the U.S. have built rail transit, though often limited in extent. Voters by referendum said yes to paying for it, in various places, Miami, Colorado, the West Coast.
 
Trains September 1946 ad about passenger service. Page 4 if you want to see the original. The same issue has
"To Washington on the Crescent." and the article starts Atlanta and heads to DC.

View attachment 35903
Wow!
That “advertorial” really “disses” the un-named Pullman Company, doesn’t it?🫢
 
The Pullman Company should not have focused so much on the 12 Section with 1 Drawing Room car because as the cartoon illustrates, they were not very good. How the porters ever made up all those beds and then had to change them back to facing seats in the morning I cannot fathom. For a long time there were not even partitions between the sections, so daytime Pullmans were like coaches but worse in that half the seats faced backwards (the upper berth passengers were supposed to use those). How did ladies with floor-length dresses, large hats, and thick coats in the winter ever manage such tight quarters? Consider one toilet in the men's and women's restrooms and having to go to the bathroom at 3:00 a.m. from an upper berth (call the porter for the one ladder at least when call buttons became standard in each berth, and then have him help you when you get back to your berth). The porter had to take shoes from the floor beneath the lower berths and shine them at night in the men's room (there was no porter's roomette), as well as assist passengers boarding or getting off in the night. I remember in 1959 on a 16-section (no drawing room) car having the porter bring the ladder to reach the upper, but managing (I was 15) to get back up there on my own. I remember a professor (born in 1902) saying he reserved an upper when traveling and that the Pullman conductor at the station of origin would say "We have a lower" (for a bit higher price of course) and he would say "I want to sleep better" and at that point the man would agree. I suppose it was quieter (e.g. no windows & farther from the aisle & wheels or at least undercarriage), although I wish in my upper from Winnipeg to Vancouver in 1967 there had been those little windows (one at each end and with a sliding plate on each for privacy as desired). The latest sections had such. Of course by then there were 4 or 6 in a Pullman with rooms, and some had canvas steps (sideways) at night and on hinges that pulled them back up against the curtains. Oh, and some compartments which had the lower bed across the car and the upper along the side also featured those little windows in their upper.
 
Rail was the only way to go in the 1890s. CNN says Amtrak runs on 21,400 miles in 2023. How Stuff Works says the peak for all railroad mileage in the US was in 1916, when it was 254,000, a number CNN also states. The resurgence of intercity rail travel in WWII, partly due to gas rationing, was followed by a steep decline. Considering how the population has concentrated in cities and suburbs, you'd have to count commuter rail and transit now, though, to be fair. Look at how undersized New York Penn Station is at track level. Then again 254,000 miles, how much ever passenger, was for a much smaller population.

When Los Angeles built that first subway in 1990, it was like, what, public transit in L.A.? Since then many places in the U.S. have built rail transit, though often limited in extent. Voters by referendum said yes to paying for it, in various places, Miami, Colorado, the West Coast.
Even in "Car Crazy" Texas, Rail is making a Comeback in the Major Cities, with the exception of Anti-Rail San Antonio!
 
I have an Official Guide of The Railways from 1916 which is larger than a Sears Roebuck Catalogue. That included many of the Electric Railways which were in their heyday. Many had overnight sleeping accomodations. You could travel to almost any place in the US or Canada by train. There were very few decent highways then. Time changes everything!
 
To think of all branch lines all over the country that had passenger service (and freight) are no longer - even the
rails the freight traffic was on have been ripped up and made into recreational trails. Not all that bad though
keeping some of the rail right of way open for future development. The buses filled in the void briefly but the car has taken over - AND - until the rural landscape becomes high rise apartments rail will not be coming back any
time soon (if at all). Oh and air service will be limited soon - tooo much stuff in air space results in gridlock !

It would be an interesting statistic the amount of Amtrak rail coverage versus what was in times past - - - - -
Track has been pulled out of the ground but very likely going back into the ground for what should be a Raleigh-Wilmington Amtrak. Most of the rail is in place and I am not sure how much is missing but I have never heard of that happening before. Generally once pulled it is gone forever and even Rails to Trails very seldom goes back to rails for freight.

Maybe we can claw back a few bits here and there a few miles at a time.
 
I have an Official Guide of The Railways from 1916 which is larger than a Sears Roebuck Catalogue. That included many of the Electric Railways which were in their heyday. Many had overnight sleeping accomodations. You could travel to almost any place in the US or Canada by train. There were very few decent highways then. Time changes everything!
Where can one find a copy ? I don't need an original edition but a decent reprint is good enough for me. That is pretty much the zenith of passenger rail in the US for number of routes served and miles of passenger rail. I have been to webpages with PDF pages here and there but a printed book would be nice.

Even in the booming WWII era there were many posts in Trains about bus substitutes for passenger rail on branch lines that were being pulled. Partly due to low ridership but still enough ridership to justify the line, but what was really wanted was the steel rails for the war effort.

WWII war effort gave us more passenger rail for a few years but the same war effort also took away from passenger rail to make war machinery.
 
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I have a reprint of the January 1930 Guide, bought a few decades ago & claimed to be the largest ever, I guess in number of pages (1,760) and somehow years ago I came by the September 1944 Guide (1,440).
Both have passenger service to SD end-of-the-line CMSTP&P branches serving Faith, Isabel, and Pollock.

In 1930 the mixed train reached Faith at 5:35 pm having left Trail City (106 miles east) at 11 am. From the major city of Mobridge on the Chicago-Seattle route you took a mixed train at 8:15 am headed 62 miles SW to reach Isabel at 11:50 am, but you reached Trail City at 9:50 to change to the 11 am for Faith. But service expanded (but didn't improve time-wise) by 1944 when, besides the mixed trains there were "Motor" ("Galloping Goose"?) units that left Mobridge for Isabel (9:25-11:43 am vs 8:35-11:25 for the mixed), but for Faith you waited longer at Trail City owing to 9:25-10:21 from Mobridge to Trail City and rather than an 80- minute wait, there was a 3-hour wait, with departure at 1:20 pm. There were 15 stops between Mobridge and Faith, but only 5 between Mobridge and Isabel.

The Soo served Pollock, SD from the main at Hankinson, ND to Wishek, ND, a 6:30am-12:55pm run in 1930 for the 135-mile passenger train but 5:45am-1pm for mixed train in 1944; there were 18 stops. At Wishek trains headed to Bismarck and Pollock, the latter a 2:30-6:45pm passenger run in 1930 and 2:05-5:40pm mixed train run in 1944; there were 6 stops. In all these cases there are stops where today there is nothing, but at one time even tiny places probably got mail, milk, commodities only by passenger or mixed train.

I shouldn't have said Pollock, SD was served by CMSTP&P (but then Soo Line is indicated eventually).
 
I have an Official Guide of The Railways from 1916 which is larger than a Sears Roebuck Catalogue. That included many of the Electric Railways which were in their heyday. Many had overnight sleeping accomodations. You could travel to almost any place in the US or Canada by train. There were very few decent highways then. Time changes everything!
I have that 1916 reprint (you can tell it's a reprint because it's on better paper than usual). Besides the interurbans it also has a lot of waterways services that were gone by the 1941 reprint. Those services had survived rail competition because they served out of the way rail cul de sacs or crossed Lake Erie, and some people hated the railroad, etc. Just as with the interurbans, not everyone started driving in 1919, but enough did try the highways to put marginal carriers into the red.

1920 05 19 - Good Roads.jpg
 
What I always found amusing, was that some of the railroads themselves, notably The Southern, actively promoted the “Good Roads” policy movement during the early 20th century, in effect biting themselves.
The SR even had an entire display train touring its territory to accomplish same…😮
 
Trains September 1946 ad about passenger service. Page 4 if you want to see the original. The same issue has
"To Washington on the Crescent." and the article starts Atlanta and heads to DC.

View attachment 35903
That ad from 1946 appears to be the work of Robert R. Young, the C&O chairman who was often tweaking the rest of the railroad industry in that era (most famously with an ad that proclaimed, "A hog can cross the country without changing trains -- but you can't.") He was a big advocate for innovation and modernization in an industry that was slow to change. The previous year, in 1945, Young had led an unsuccessful bid to acquire the operating pool of the Pullman Company, which instead went to a consortium of the large railroads -- hence the criticism here of the big railroads' unambitious (in Young's view) plans for updating the sleeper fleet. Later, in the mid-1950s, he won control of the New York Central in a proxy fight and did his best to shake up the corporate culture there; alas, the NYC's problems by then were too big to be cured by innovation alone.
 
Trains, July 1947 page 4
View attachment 35975
And of course it was the growth in air travel that made baseball expansion possible. "The expansion of MLB coincided with an increase in the ease of travel by commercial jets, making it easier for players to fly across the continent. This is important given that when Walter O'Malley moved his Dodgers to Los Angeles, the closest team, other than the San Francisco Giants, was in St. Louis." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_relocations_of_1950s–1960s. Both the Dodgers and the Giants made the cross-country trek in 1958. And some fans are still heartbroken.) Before then, every team was east of the Mississippi, well, if you count St. Louis which is literally on the Mississippi, and train travel to an "away" game consumed a day at most.
 
The Yankees were one of the last teams to stop using Trains for travel, especially since the GM
The Yankees were one of the last MLB Teams to move frommostly Train Travel to Air.

And the GM George Weiss, and Manager Casey Stengel, didn't care for Air travel, but both were replaced after losing the 1960 World Series to the Pirates, and franchise moves and expansion to the West Coast made it necessary to use Air for extensive travel,!
 
And of course it was the growth in air travel that made baseball expansion possible. "The expansion of MLB coincided with an increase in the ease of travel by commercial jets, making it easier for players to fly across the continent. This is important given that when Walter O'Malley moved his Dodgers to Los Angeles, the closest team, other than the San Francisco Giants, was in St. Louis." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_relocations_of_1950s–1960s. Both the Dodgers and the Giants made the cross-country trek in 1958. And some fans are still heartbroken.) Before then, every team was east of the Mississippi, well, if you count St. Louis which is literally on the Mississippi, and train travel to an "away" game consumed a day at most.
Also most games were still in the Daytime, which allowed teams to travel overnight on Trains, but with the move to mostly night games and an expanded schedule, Air travel became necessary!
 
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That ad from 1946 appears to be the work of Robert R. Young, the C&O chairman who was often tweaking the rest of the railroad industry in that era (most famously with an ad that proclaimed, "A hog can cross the country without changing trains -- but you can't.") He was a big advocate for innovation and modernization in an industry that was slow to change. The previous year, in 1945, Young had led an unsuccessful bid to acquire the operating pool of the Pullman Company, which instead went to a consortium of the large railroads -- hence the criticism here of the big railroads' unambitious (in Young's view) plans for updating the sleeper fleet. Later, in the mid-1950s, he won control of the New York Central in a proxy fight and did his best to shake up the corporate culture there; alas, the NYC's problems by then were too big to be cured by innovation alone.
I ran across that ad as well.
 
Also most games were still in the Daytime, which allowed teams to travel overnight on Trains, but with the move to mostly night games and an expanded schedule, Air travel became necessary!
At 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time, skilled union craftsmen in the composing room at the Oregon Journal locked up the chases for the Night Sports Final, known as the "green streak" for an ink strip down the right margin. Thanks to the difference in time, it carried the most active NYSE stock finals and MLB afternoon game results. At 3:00 pm we got out of elementary school. At 3:30 p.m. a green and white Journal truck arrived at our rendezvous point and we were distributing the still warm newspapers, over an hour ahead of the evil evening Oregonian.

Looking over this clipping that I turned up it seems that a lot of things in it are gone. Check the stock list.

1958 01 27 PTCo interurban 002.jpg
 
One of the interesting things in old railroad advertising is how they dealt with emergency situations. Some wartime print matter is mundane:
1919 USRRA Shasta tt 001.jpg
As you can see, my grandmother followed the government's instructions, which is why I have this timetable.

At the other end of the spectrum, artist and copy writer and the executive/s who approved the ad below produced something memorable. The ad below was widely reproduced, and a network radio broadcaster read it over the air.
1943 Kid 001.jpg
 
At the other end of the spectrum, artist and copy writer and the executive/s who approved the ad below produced something memorable. The ad below was widely reproduced, and a network radio broadcaster read it over the air.
View attachment 35981
Seems it was Eddie Cantor who read it on the radio, and someone else wrote a song from it. The poem was written by an ad-man named Nelson Metcalf, Jr. https://blogs.lib.uconn.edu/archive...vertising-campaign-of-the-new-haven-railroad/

At 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time, skilled union craftsmen in the composing room at the Oregon Journal locked up the chases for the Night Sports Final, known as the "green streak" for an ink strip down the right margin. Thanks to the difference in time, it carried the most active NYSE stock finals and MLB afternoon game results. At 3:00 pm we got out of elementary school. At 3:30 p.m. a green and white Journal truck arrived at our rendezvous point and we were distributing the still warm newspapers, over an hour ahead of the evil evening Oregonian.

Looking over this clipping that I turned up it seems that a lot of things in it are gone. Check the stock list.

View attachment 35979
The San Francisco Examiner, an afternoon paper, put out early editions downtown in the late 1980s, starting about noon. At 1pm the NY Stock Exchange closed and I was amazed on lunch break to see the paper appear in boxes with the Dow Jones index about twelve (?) minutes later. SF had the Pacific Stock Exchange, the only major public trading floor west of Chicago, as well as some other institutions representing all of the West Coast: the Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Circuit Court. At "the other end of the spectrum" as you say, the Xam was trying to shake off its stodgy image by publishing a column called "Media Critic" by Hunter S. Thompson, and another by some other 1960s luminary. Thompson was well past his prime and mainly mused on his girlfriend and argumentative life in Colorado. For all its institutional bona fides, the SF newspapers were great, by the higher standards of the time. The paper of record was the LA Times. It was influential enough, or ambitious enough, to distribute itself to boxes in Washington DC. At that time you could get a wider geographic variety of papers on the street in DC than in NY.

(Missouri is the only state with two Federal Reserve Banks, by the way.)
 
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Seems it was Eddie Cantor who read it on the radio, and someone else wrote a song from it. The poem was written by an ad-man named Nelson Metcalf, Jr. https://blogs.lib.uconn.edu/archive...vertising-campaign-of-the-new-haven-railroad/


The San Francisco Examiner, an afternoon paper, put out early editions downtown in the late 1980s, starting about noon. At 1pm the NY Stock Exchange closed and I was amazed on lunch break to see the paper appear in boxes with the Dow Jones index about twelve (?) minutes later. SF had the Pacific Stock Exchange, the only major public trading floor west of Chicago, as well as some other institutions representing all of the West Coast: the Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Circuit Court. At "the other end of the spectrum" as you say, the Xam was trying to shake off its stodgy image by publishing a column called "Media Critic" by Hunter S. Thompson, and another by some other 1960s luminary. Thompson was well past his prime and mainly mused on his girlfriend and argumentative life in Colorado. For all its institutional bona fides, the SF newspapers were great, by the higher standards of the time. The paper of record was the LA Times. It was influential enough, or ambitious enough, to distribute itself to boxes in Washington DC. At that time you could get a wider geographic variety of papers on the street in DC than in NY.

(Missouri is the only state with two Federal Reserve Banks, by the way.)
During the 1950's and well into 1990's one could buy any major paper in the world as well as all major U.S. papers in Times Sq. The newsstand was at the east side of the square at 44th St or 45th St.
 
During the 1950's and well into 1990's one could buy any major paper in the world as well as all major U.S. papers in Times Sq. The newsstand was at the east side of the square at 44th St or 45th St.

What I always found amusing, was that some of the railroads themselves, notably The Southern, actively promoted the “Good Roads” policy movement during the early 20th century, in effect biting themselves.
The SR even had an entire display train touring its territory to accomplish same…😮
This happens in industry all the time even today. It's like the fable of the scorpion and the frog crossing the river. I started out in the computer mainframe industry and saw its demise mostly caused by fiber optics. IBM touted the installation of fiber optics because it speed up information transfer between mainframes. At the same time it made much of their computer rooms obsolete. Where businesses might have multiple computer rooms in a city now had one in a far off remote location. Mainframe computers still exist but only as a very small market.

The railroads probably thought the new roads and highways would make their train freight more accessible by trucks and they could shed unprofitable rail routes but still retain freight business. In reality new trucking companies could compete with rail freight using government funded roads with much lower overhead and infrastructure costs.
 
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