Interesting facts and notes in old railroad magazines

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McLeansvilleAppFan said:
Trains, May 1959 cover is very existential, "What is a Railroad?"

There is an ad on page 54-55 about the Budd slumbercoaches and their occupancy rates. Great picture of their outside but a missed opportunity to have a great picture of the inside, though there is a small picture.
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Also a comment about a plan to merge all the Chicago passenger trains into one facility being presented by the mayor.
 
Trains June 1959. Part of letter to editor.

Passenger trains and shotguns
I suppose you had your feet braced
to receive a great many irate letters fol
lowing release of the April Trains. I was
all prepared to fire a hot letter at you,
for I assumed that Trains would lay the
major blame for the passenger-train
problem at the door of railroad labor
particularly the operating employees
for your magazine has been pretty con
sistently anti-labor in the past.....

I have noticed that in the almost 20 years I have scanned to make these posts and even in more modern times. There was a columnist of 20 years ago or so that seemed to go on an anti-labor screed every column.
 
McLeansvilleAppFan said:
Trains June 1959. Part of letter to editor.

Passenger trains and shotguns
I suppose you had your feet braced
to receive a great many irate letters fol
lowing release of the April Trains. I was
all prepared to fire a hot letter at you,
for I assumed that Trains would lay the
major blame for the passenger-train
problem at the door of railroad labor
particularly the operating employees
for your magazine has been pretty con
sistently anti-labor in the past.....

I have noticed that in the almost 20 years I have scanned to make these posts and even in more modern times. There was a columnist of 20 years ago or so that seemed to go on an anti-labor screed every column.
Click to expand...
Was that John Kneiling, the “Professional Iconoclast”, as he liked to call himself?
I recall his big thing was promoting integral freight trains…
 
The SCL budget sleeper reminds me when 16 duplex roomettes & 4 bedrooms were sometimes lower-priced but excellent sleeping cars in the era not long before and for a while after Amtrak. The rooms of course were much roomier than the slumbercoaches which had 24 single and 8 double rooms as I recall from riding in those various times. Overnight from Pittsburgh to Chicago about 1971 my trip in a 16-4 Pullman was great. I remember overhearing the (PRR-just-turned-Amtrak?) trainmen in the aisle remarking about upper & lower berths in part of an adjacent sleeper because for years the PRR had not used berths at all. Back in 1954 my grandmother boarded the PRR's Golden Triangle (a name for downtown Pittsburgh) to Chicago to connect with the Dakota 400 to Brookings, SD. She had coach but my father went and got her a lower berth. Mom & I accompanied her to the Pullmans that could be boarded by 9:30 pm and watched the porter make up the berth. It was an old 12 section plus drawing room car and there were no partitions between the facing seats of each section, so he pulled a divider board out of the upper berth along with the lower berth mattress and so on. He slid the board between the backs of the seats and proceeded to hang the curtains of both the unused upper & her lower berth. There was only one other section made up, and it was next to hers and was the last of the 6 sections on that side of the car. I sat in one of the seats across the aisle to watch this amazing process. How porters did all that work on hundreds of trains is hard to comprehend. Soon the Golden Triangle would have only Pullmans with rooms, specifically 12 duplex rooms and 4 or 5 bedrooms. Only PRR had those wonderful cars. I think the 5-bedroom ones had bedrooms without a separate sink & toilet annex.
 
I have slept in all manner of single accommodations on trains, except for the duplex roomette…upper and lower open section’s, single slumbercoach, standard roomette, and the largest of all, the duplex single room, which ran crosswise in the car.

Forgot about the experimental, so-called “Ampad” Economy Room on the Shenandoah…missed that one, too….🙂
 
railiner said:
I have slept in all manner of single accommodations on trains, except for the duplex roomette…upper and lower open section’s, single slumbercoach, standard roomette, and the largest of all, the duplex single room, which ran crosswise in the car.

Forgot about the experimental, so-called “Ampad” Economy Room on the Shenandoah…missed that one, too….🙂
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If you can find one in service that hasn't been converted to Prestige class, the VIA Chateau cars have eight duplex roomettes. I remember riding in both the upper and lower configurations on the Atlantic and later on the Ocean in the '90s and early 2000s.
 
fdaley said:
If you can find one in service that hasn't been converted to Prestige class, the VIA Chateau cars have eight duplex roomettes. I remember riding in both the upper and lower configurations on the Atlantic and later on the Ocean in the '90s and early 2000s.
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I’d love to experience that, and also I believe they have 3 bed drawing rooms as well…
 
railiner said:
I’d love to experience that, and also I believe they have 3 bed drawing rooms as well…
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Yes, Room A in those cars is a drawing room. I haven't seen one of the Chateaus in revenue service on the Canadian in years, other than the ones that were gutted and converted to Prestige service. But perhaps some of them still run on the Ocean at busy times when they supplement with HEP cars -- or on the Churchill trains?
 
jpakala said:
The SCL budget sleeper reminds me when 16 duplex roomettes & 4 bedrooms were sometimes lower-priced but excellent sleeping cars in the era not long before and for a while after Amtrak
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And here it is. The appropriately named ‘Oriole’ in the B&O museum in Baltimore we saw last week. I rode in these each summer in the 50’s on the way to my grandmother’s house. Great fun as a kid to hang by the grab bars on the upper roomettes.

1718887029079.jpeg

We saw the Braves beat the Orioles at Camden Yards. The photo is of the usually nocturnal Pratt street switcher that switched industry on that area including the B&O warehouse in the photo.
1718887187071.jpeg
And here is that same warehouse today.
1718887303085.jpeg
 
fdaley said:
Yes, Room A in those cars is a drawing room. I haven't seen one of the Chateaus in revenue service on the Canadian in years, other than the ones that were gutted and converted to Prestige service. But perhaps some of them still run on the Ocean at busy times when they supplement with HEP cars -- or on the Churchill trains?
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Right on both counts. The lone sleeper on the Northern Manitoba train is a Chateau and two were seen recently on the Ocean's larger seasonal consist. One is often used by the crew. A "Bedroom For Three" is currently bookable on several summer runs, including one I'm considering in September.
 
jiml said:
Right on both counts. The lone sleeper on the Northern Manitoba train is a Chateau and two were seen recently on the Ocean's larger seasonal consist. One is often used by the crew. A "Bedroom For Three" is currently bookable on several summer runs, including one I'm considering in September.
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I guess a trip to Churchill is in order…😁
 
How about a railroad that liked commuter’s?😮

That could describe the Chicago & North Western, in the late ‘60’s. At the time I believe they were rated as the most “commuter-friendly” railroad in the nation…

My, how times have changed…😉

MikefromCrete said:
I'd say Kansas City Southern. They were still buying new coaches into the early 60's.
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I remember those…IIRC, they were the last long distance coaches built, (non-commuter), until the Metroliner’s came along. I believe they are now in the North Carolina fleet.
 
railiner said:
How about a railroad that liked commuter’s?😮

That could describe the Chicago & North Western, in the late ‘60’s. At the time I believe they were rated as the most “commuter-friendly” railroad in the nation…

My, how times have changed…😉
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Getting close.

railiner said:
I remember those…IIRC, they were the last long distance coaches built, (non-commuter), until the Metroliner’s came along. I believe they are now in the North Carolina fleet.
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That is correct for some of the coaches that NC uses. I was one a few today. I love those cars for getting NC more in the game.
 
The NP was pretty friendly and when they did cut back a service there usually was not a howl because people knew that they had tried to make it work.

Tried new types of equipment.
1964 06 S-coach cover 001.jpg


Experimented with new types of fares.
1966 NP youth fare 001.jpg

Kept service to university towns by using RDC's. (Photo at Lewiston, Idaho via Moscow and Pullman from Spokane.)

1955 03 Lewiston RDC 002.jpg

Bold ideas accepted for excursions (while UP was restricting them to main lines only and SP was charging to deadhead equipment from Oakland to Portland).

1966 10 15 NP Canada001.jpg
 
Right beside the Printed in USA mark is, I assume a date code for June 1964 and then what appears to be a union printing bug. Either due to wanting to use union printers to send a message to union supporters or there just not being anything but union printers around to print the advertisement it is interesting. How times have changed.
 

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