Remembering the Golden Age that Preceded Amtrak

[jis]

When we visited the US for a year back in the early/mid '60s, our hosts politely suggested to us that traveling down to Washington DC was fine, but any further south may not be that pleasant an experience. So we did spend several days at Washington DC, but the southmost we went was to the Arlington National Cemetery.

The next time I traveled south of Washington DC was in 1978 to visit a friend at Clemson University in SC. Traveled by Greyhound since I could not afford Amtrak in any form back then.

 

[jpakala]

My friend traveled between the 1940s and 1970s and thankfully didn't experience Jim Crow. States such as CO, MA, and MT come to mind as where he went. Social strata are the Jim Crow in many countries, such as trains with three classes but their own clienteles.

 

[jis]

My friend traveled between the 1940s and 1970s and thankfully didn't experience Jim Crow. States such as CO, MA, and MT come to mind as where he went. Social strata are the Jim Crow in many countries, such as trains with three classes but their own clienteles.

Yeah. Jim Crow was pretty state specific stuff. In the early '60s we traveled in all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC and extreme north Virginia adjoining DC and had no problems at all.

After 1980 I have traveled all 50 states with no problem, and now live in Florida where strangely half the people insist I am white! Since I am pretty blind to such things unless I am forced to recognize such by actions of others, I just let things roll as they come, and work through the system interstitially (that is - through the cracks) if that is what it takes.

 

[goes2jack]

Were these sometimes be referred to as a partitioned coach?

 

[WWW]

July of '61 US Army Military Police training at Fort Gordon GA -
A hundred years after the Civil War -
Go outside the confines of the Fort and it was a white/black world at Augusta GA -
What little free time was spent on the Fort grounds -
Not worth the time to go to town for a drink entertainment following arcane rules what
side of the street to be on - what drinking fountain to use - what rest room permitted -
the list goes on - discussion briefings at the Fort about where what to do and avoid while
visiting Augusta -
YES July of '61 -

Don't know much about the area except for the Masters Golf Tournament -

And a blessing that my MP Training was assigned to a Ordinance Security Depot in Germany -
wasn't assigned to a MP Cop unit breaking up drunk fights and sorting out unruly things.
Was great to have duty escorting Ordinance by TRAIN - air - truck throughout West Germany.

 

[Willbridge]

Very much enjoyed your story, too. Thanks for posting!
The E-L Lake Cities was another one of the trains I managed to get in pre Amtrak, although it ended the year before...

I rode the Lake Cities from Marion Union Station to Hoboken in May 1969. It was the nicest train that I rode in the Eastern Region.

 

[Willbridge]

I don't believe Amtrak took ownership of any heavyweight passenger cars, but believe they did use some in the early years, from their 'host' railroads. The ones that stick out in my mind were some GM&O heavyweights used on some St. Louis/Chicago trains...

In September 1967 the GM&O Midnight Special had a heavyweight sleeper.

And an answer to whether Amtrak operated trains with heavyweight cars - the Valpo Commuter.

 

[railiner]

And an answer to whether Amtrak operated trains with heavyweight cars - the Valpo Commuter.

But weren't those PRR P-70's used by Penn Central and Conrail, before Amtrak took over in 1979?
The wiki article shows these being used by Amtrak...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calum...trains_at_Valparaiso_station,_August_1980.jpg

 

[Willbridge]

July of '61 US Army Military Police training at Fort Gordon GA -
A hundred years after the Civil War -
Go outside the confines of the Fort and it was a white/black world at Augusta GA -
What little free time was spent on the Fort grounds -
Not worth the time to go to town for a drink entertainment following arcane rules what
side of the street to be on - what drinking fountain to use - what rest room permitted -
the list goes on - discussion briefings at the Fort about where what to do and avoid while
visiting Augusta -
YES July of '61 -

Don't know much about the area except for the Masters Golf Tournament -

And a blessing that my MP Training was assigned to a Ordinance Security Depot in Germany -
wasn't assigned to a MP Cop unit breaking up drunk fights and sorting out unruly things.
Was great to have duty escorting Ordinance by TRAIN - air - truck throughout West Germany.

Did you have a Railway MP brassard? One thing I missed doing in the Army was to get my picture taken with a Train Interpreter brassard. The other thing I missed was the April 1971 end of the four east-west trains serving my home town of Portland. I was in Berlin trying to explain the insanity going on in the States to our German railway staff.




Still from Allied Artists Stop Train 349 - Verspätung in Marienborn.

 

[Willbridge]

But weren't those PRR P-70's used by Penn Central and Conrail, before Amtrak took over in 1979?
The wiki article shows these being used by Amtrak...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calum...trains_at_Valparaiso_station,_August_1980.jpg

You're right. In 1976 Valparaiso was an experimental stop for the Broadway Limited but the commuter trains were still in PC's hands.

 

[MARC Rider]

To me, some of the most interesting consists existed during the transition years between heavyweight and streamline when you would see a mix of both on a train, often second tier or lower service. Without doing any research, I wonder if any heavyweights (likely bags) survived into Amtrak?

I remember riding home from New York to Philadelphia at the end of August, 1972. I took the Crescent, which, of course, was not an Amtrak train at the time, except that Amtrak ran it from New York to Washington. Amtrak also added a few of its own cars for the local New York - Washington business. The car I was stuck in was an old PRR P-70 that had been rehabbed a bit and painted that ugly Penn Central green. The tracks had already been upgraded in New Jersey for the initial Metroliner service, and I think the trains would go 100 mph at times. Well, maybe we weren't going that fast, but we were really rattling around in that P-70, it didn't seem like it had been built for comfortable running at the speeds we were making. But I did get home safely, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

 

[Willbridge]

I rode in a heavyweight PRR coach with walkover seats from Indianapolis to Columbus in 1969 on either the Penn Texas or the Spirit of St. Louis. It was decorated with posters from the New Jersey commuter services and was carrying through passengers from St. Louis. On my weekend pass back to Fort Benjamin Harrison I rode an unnamed PC train that had one passenger car, a nice lightweight ex-NYC coach with reclining seats. If I hadn't already guessed it that trip would have convinced me that PC was doomed.

In May 1969 I rode the Morning Congressional NYC to DC and I think there were heavies and lights in the train. There also were passengers riding without tickets. The conductor never made it all the way through to lift tickets. At Philadelphia the empty Turbotrain lapped us. It had been canceled due to a mechanical failure.

 

[frequentflyer]

What Was the weigh of the heavyweight cars? What the reason of making them so heavy?

 

[WWW]

Did you have a Railway MP brassard? One thing I missed doing in the Army was to get my picture taken with a Train Interpreter brassard. The other thing I missed was the April 1971 end of the four east-west trains serving my home town of Portland. I was in Berlin trying to explain the insanity going on in the States to our German railway staff.

View attachment 20595

View attachment 20597
Still from Allied Artists Stop Train 349 - Verspätung in Marienborn.

No fancy dress (white hat) uniforms - just fatigues.

Basically would pick up ship movements at the port of Bremerhaven - air at Ramstein AFB and move
the ordinance to where ever it was destined for. Once picked up and off of the rail head or AFB
we would escort it by multi-wheeled (18 wheels) vehicle to its assignment. We drove jeeps with
flashing blue lights and ta-dee ta-dee sirens in a convoy of trucks equipment including radio
communications and commissary vehicles - exciting - exhilarating and exhausting. There was
the boring side of this storing the ordinance in our bunkered facility on the French border until
such time as it was needed - service replacement whatever. Every movement involved moving
the ordinance up to the Iron Curtin border of East Germany.

Berlin was OFF-LIMITS due to security clearance and nature of the ordinance !

Noticed the patch on the MP bassard - 7th Army USAER - ours was the COMZ patch images:

 

[WWW]

What Was the weigh of the heavyweight cars? What the reason of making them so heavy?

Perhaps it was the length and if you noticed the 3 wheel trucks on both ends of the car supporting that weight (steel).
Aluminum and composite material are lighter needing only the 2 wheel trucks and were a more recent development.

One of the heaviest weight cars was the Milwaukee Superdome owned by the 261 org.
Super Dome – Friends of the 261
Weighing in at 104 tons
Even on the roughest of tracks this car rides like a smooth limo !

 

[Willbridge]

To add to the "Golden Age" list -- I agree that the Golden Age was almost any time other than 1968-71 when after most postal contracts ended there was a stampede of train-off applications.

My list (not including excursion trains / interurbans / steamers/ buses / streetcars and Portland<>Vancouver, WA multiple trips).

* 1950's - Portland-Seattle round-trip on the Astra-Dome UP train.
Portland > The Dalles on the Domeliner City of Portland with lunch in the Vista-Dome diner.

* 1960 - SP Cascade Portland to Oakland, SP Shasta Daylight Oakland to Portland. On a business trip with my dad. Saw Charles de Gaulle in a ticker tape parade on Montgomery Street. Met characters straight out of Dashiell Hammett. Choice of four daily newspapers in the City.

* 1960's - Portland-Seattle pool trains of all three companies, various destinations. Last trip was for Christmas leave from Fort Lewis (Tacoma) to Portland in 1968.

* 1964 - San Francisco<>Redwood City on SP Commute (with an RPO!).

* 1964 - Oakland > Portland on Cascade.

* 1966 - Portland > Seattle > Spokane > Paradise > Spokane > Hinkle > Portland. Used a UP-Milwaukee Road Circle ticket and the NP Youth Fare on the Mainstreeter.

* 1966-67 - misc. trips Portland <> Salem on SP trains.

* 1967 - Oakland > Portland on Cascade.

* 1967 - Portland > Minneapolis > Chicago > St. Louis > Chicago > Gary > Chicago > St. Paul > Hawley > Winnipeg >Edmonton > Vancouver, BC > Seattle > Portland all at the regular price for a direct Portland <> St. Louis trip, plus a coach seat reservation charge on the North Coast Limited. Other name trains: Morning Zephyr (fastest scheduled train in the U.S.), Green Diamond, Abraham Lincoln, Pioneer, Mainstreeter, Super Continental, Afternoon International.

* 1968 - Seattle to Vancouver, BC on Morning International in Parlor Car.

* 1968 - Los Angeles > Martinez on the San Joaquin Daylight, Cascade Martinez to Portland. And does riding the deadhead Super Chief/El Capitan from the yard to LAUPT count? Or the NWP's RDC from the yard to the Eureka station?

* 1969 - Weekend round-trips from the Fort Ord flag stop into the City on the Del Monte. Never saw regular Bing Crosby, but got to know Eddie Elkins, #1 seniority lounge car attendant on the SP. And, yes, there was a real flag to wave.

* 1969 - Salinas > San Francisco in the Parlor Car on the Coast Daylight.

* 1969 - South Bend to Chicago on the South Shore, Chicago back to Indianapolis on the James Whitcomb Riley.

* 1969 - Indianapolis - Columbus as described previously.

* 1969 - Indianapolis > Marion (PC - Big Four)

* 1969 - Marion > Hoboken (EL) as described previously.

* 1969 - New York City > Washington, DC > Newark > Red Bank > New York City.

* 1969 - New York City - Croton-Harmon.

* 1969 - New York City - New Brunswick, NJ.

Overseas June 1969 - August 1971. Name trains that I recall: Ile de France, Rheingold, Harwich Boat Train, Johann Strauss, Vienna-Oostende Express, Paris-Copenhagen Express, East-West Express, Metropolitano. Unnamed RENFE, SNCF, SNCB, DB, Dutch and Danish trains. Hey! Somebody had to fight the Vietnam War over there.

I missed a lot of last runs but as the news clippings arrived I remembered what my father said: "There are railfans who'd rather be able to say they were on a last run than to do something to save and improve a useful service." So I set out to learn as much about useful service from the Europeans as I could.


Seen at Croton-Harmon in 1969.

 

[Willbridge]

No fancy dress (white hat) uniforms - just fatigues.

Basically would pick up ship movements at the port of Bremerhaven - air at Ramstein AFB and move
the ordinance to where ever it was destined for. Once picked up and off of the rail head or AFB
we would escort it by multi-wheeled (18 wheels) vehicle to its assignment. We drove jeeps with
flashing blue lights and ta-dee ta-dee sirens in a convoy of trucks equipment including radio
communications and commissary vehicles - exciting - exhilarating and exhausting. There was
the boring side of this storing the ordinance in our bunkered facility on the French border until
such time as it was needed - service replacement whatever. Every movement involved moving
the ordinance up to the Iron Curtin border of East Germany.

Berlin was OFF-LIMITS due to security clearance and nature of the ordinance !

Noticed the patch on the MP bassard - 7th Army USAER - ours was the COMZ patch images:

You guys must have been popular on the autobahns! Or did you move in off hours?

The patch worn by the MP's from Berlin was the only one in the U.S. Army with the name of a city on it.

It was extra-territorial, but the Golden Age of U.S. military trains in Europe was in the period 1948-1955 or so, before and after the Blockade when the Army trains went from Paris to Berlin and Vienna. Reservations were handled just as in the U.S. back then with car diagrams and names penciled in. None of our passengers dressed as well as Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon in Berlin Express (1948), which had more of the Paris > Frankfurt train. Likely not worth the trouble to film in the Soviet Zone.

 

[Willbridge]

What Was the weigh of the heavyweight cars? What the reason of making them so heavy?

It was the riveted, "battleship" steel cars that replaced the wooden cars. There's a good lay person's description in a new DVD titled "Pullman - America's Hotel on Wheels" from Classic Trains. Those cars rode smoothly at 40 to 60 mph, better than some lightweight cars (as described above) in that speed range on rough track.

In 1965 there were 2,398 heavyweight coaches and coach combinations on US Class I railroads, not counting suburban cars. I don't seem to have weights except for non-standard size cars. Most cars then and later were 85 feet in length. Shorter lengths were used for mail and package express cars to compensate for heavy loads.

 

[railiner]

What Was the weigh of the heavyweight cars? What the reason of making them so heavy?

Here are some explanations of the differences...

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/312...ht" passenger cars,and more resistant to rust.

http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/740/p/282828/3252058.aspx

 

[railiner]

I remember riding home from New York to Philadelphia at the end of August, 1972. I took the Crescent, which, of course, was not an Amtrak train at the time, except that Amtrak ran it from New York to Washington. Amtrak also added a few of its own cars for the local New York - Washington business. The car I was stuck in was an old PRR P-70 that had been rehabbed a bit and painted that ugly Penn Central green. The tracks had already been upgraded in New Jersey for the initial Metroliner service, and I think the trains would go 100 mph at times. Well, maybe we weren't going that fast, but we were really rattling around in that P-70, it didn't seem like it had been built for comfortable running at the speeds we were making. But I did get home safely, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

As I stated in my earlier post, Amtrak sometimes "borrowed" cars from their host roads, but did not actually own heavyweight passenger cars. Especially in the Northeast Corridor, the PRR, PC, Conrail, and Amtrak would often "borrow" from each other cars to meet demands...a practice that continues even to this day.
Amtrak will lease entire trains from MARC, or NJT, or SEPTA to run Thanksgiving holiday 'extras'. And in the past, if a car on a Corridor train was bad ordered at Sunnyside at the last minute, they might just grab anything available to replace it...

 

[jis]

Here are some explanations of the differences...

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/312...ht" passenger cars,and more resistant to rust.

http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/740/p/282828/3252058.aspx

Those are really useful references. Thanks!

 

[toddinde]

In the first (top) photo what station was that ?
The black shed roof looks like it would be Minneapolis - but the clock tower in the background is not correct -
and the trains departing the Minneapolis station did not turn left (they turn to the right) and 5 blocks later
after leaving the depot crossing the Washington Avenue viaduct taking the short-line route to St. Paul's Union Depot.
The Milwaukee depot in Minneapolis was used by the Milwaukee Road - Soo Line - and the Rock Island RR
The Minneapolis Milwaukee depot has been converted into a skating rink under the black shed roof - the clock tower is still there.

More History of the Minneapolis Milwaukee depot:
Minneapolis station (Milwaukee Road) - Wikipedia


In the second photo the fabulous skytop observation car - there were only 4 built and only -1- runs the rails today - the
Cedar Rapids owned by the 261 - the other mates - the Priest Rapids - Dell Rapids and **** Rapids are history -
Reference LINK:

Where are the Skytops? (trainweb.org)

Very interesting history behind the Milwaukee Road Skytop and Beaver Tail observation cars

Egads this internet thing is intoxicating

That’s a model of the Milwaukee Road’s Milwaukee station on Everett Street.

 

[jpakala]

False information about railroads abounds, such as the common idea that they failed to realize they were in the transportation business not the RR business, but huge factors contributing to their decline were: 1) they paid taxes on stations, yards, and rights of way, from being the main supporter of many counties & their schools to exorbitant taxes on big city terminals, whereas air, road & water transportation had both "terminals & routes" paid for and maintained by the government, such as the FAA's 70,000 employees and the Army Corps of Engineers dredging, port & locks maintenancem etc.; 2) beginning when they did, RRs were saddled with a seniority tradition that led to promotion apart from competence for an administrative job; 3) partly owing to RR power, , jockeying, treatment of folk, etc. they came to have uniqueness such as ICC rules, RR retirement system, interline obstacles, archaisms, etc.

 

[MARC Rider]

RRs were saddled with a seniority tradition that led to promotion apart from competence for an administrative job;

What makes you think that's unique to railroads?

 

[WWW]

What makes you think that's unique to railroads?

The Peter Principle it is ALIVE and well - what a way to run a railroad !