Remembering the Golden Age that Preceded Amtrak

[Willbridge]

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

Before the Peter Principle, my dad used to say "there are two kinds of railroad managers, those who want to run trains and those who don't." It took me a while when I was a kid to figure out what the latter group was (not) doing.

 

[bms]

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

The Peter Principle assumes all the managers at least once were good at something! That probably was only true at half the companies I've worked for!

 

[Steve4031]

The Peter Principal is alive and well in education too. Some of my past administrators were great at telling us how we should be teaching challenging students, not understanding that they were asking some students to do things that they did not have the prerequisite skills. My braver, veteran colleagues handled this practice by asking the administrator to come in to their class and model the lesson. Usually the suggestions went away as well as the administrator.

 

[WWW]

A close resemblance to the "DILBERT" cartoon in many newspapers - although nothing about running a railroad off its rails !

 

[MilwaukeeRoadLover]

Thank you for your response... authenticity is important.

So I went back to research the building underneath that clock tower... and looked at different pics of it... it does seem to be the Milwaukee Road Station in Milwaukee which may have changed in appearance as modifications were made. I may be wrong and I'm always open to more information...

Top picture with inset shows station pictured is indeed in Milwaukee. Historical records also seem to pictorially verify this to be the station. I've reposted the picture in question on the bottom for view comparisons.



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Yes, that was definitely Milwaukee's Everret Street Station (aka Union Depot). I only saw this from afar briefly before it was torn before it was torn down. Not far from the North Shore Line's station and about a mile west of the Lakefront Depot...another gem. All later replaced by the hideous Intermodal.

 

[The Commissioner]

I have fond memories of riding the SAL and then SCL Silver Meteor from Newark down to south Florida. Early in the trip, everyone on the train would be invited to the dining car for complimentary fresh squeezed orange juice. Because we had coach seats most of the time, I'd go back to the observation car and read the copy of the Official Railway Guide they kept there and leaf through the pages looking at all the other trains in America. Also fun was walking from one end of the train to the other. Back in those days, the train could be 20+ cars. Those were the days!

 

[railiner]

I have fond memories of riding the SAL and then SCL Silver Meteor from Newark down to south Florida. Early in the trip, everyone on the train would be invited to the dining car for complimentary fresh squeezed orange juice. Because we had coach seats most of the time, I'd go back to the observation car and read the copy of the Official Railway Guide they kept there and leaf through the pages looking at all the other trains in America. Also fun was walking from one end of the train to the other. Back in those days, the train could be 20+ cars. Those were the days!

I had forgotten that many top trains carried an ORG aboard. Pullman cars also carried "Hotel Red Books", and Western Union Telegraph blanks, which you could send enroute.
https://www.familytree.com/blog/1917-hotel-red-book-and-directory/
My family used to take my grandfather to Penn Station, NY each winter, and put him on a Seaboard train to Miami. The last time, was in 1956. I now know it was a Seaboard, because I recall the distinctive stainless steel. ACL trains were painted. The most 'exotic' car on the Meteor, was the 'sun-lounge' sleeper, with its glass roof panels and large side windows.

The later merged SCL's William Rice maintained top-notch service, right up to the advent of Amtrak...the winter only Florida Special was a superb train with its candle-light dinners, and recreation car features and activities...

 

[20th Century Rider]

Wow Railiner... Seaboard was an amazing rail system... hard to find pics unless one really investigates. Don't know how accurate these are... let us know. Even harder to find youtube vids of the amazing equipment... even with Greenfrog... but when I viewed that sun-lounge sleeper it just took my breath away!

 

[fdaley]

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...

Did you cover the whole route from Chicago to Hoboken? So much of it is gone now, especially the western end. Even when I was tooling around Ohio in the early '90s, the tracks and most of the stations were no more, and it was hard to tell in some places where the right of way had been.

 

[20th Century Rider]

In 1956, a few years before I was born, my family moved from Millburn NJ to Scranton PA. Even then, Joe Biden's hometown was struggling, the hub of a coal-mining region that had gone into steep decline.

Although it was only 135 miles from New York City, it is difficult to imagine now just how insular Scranton was in those days before the interstate highways. Even in the '70s, after the highways came through, we used to joke about living "behind the anthracite curtain," as it seemed there were so many people there who never ventured beyond the coal towns that lined the Lackawanna and Susquehanna valleys.

In the '50s, for those who did travel to the world beyond, the trains of the Lackawanna Railroad were the way to go. And my older brother, whose heart was already in metro New York and who never adjusted to Scranton, discovered those trains. So every couple of months for most of the next decade, beginning when he was about 7, my mother would put him onto the eastbound Phoebe Snow at Scranton on Friday afternoon after school, and he'd ride to Brick Church station in New Jersey, where my grandparents would pick him up in time for dinner. On Saturday they'd plan a day trip to New York. On Sunday, he'd board the Phoebe just before 11 and be back in Scranton about 1:30. From those trips, a lifetime of train enthusiasm was born -- for him and later for me.

Although I was too young to ride along with my brother on most of those trips, my earliest memory of train travel is from one Christmas, I think it was 1964, when my mother and I joined him for the ride to NJ and back. By this time the Lackawanna had merged with the Erie, and the Phoebe had been converted to an overnight run originating in Chicago, rather than a day run from Buffalo. The eastbound was hours late coming from Chicago. I remember sitting for a long time in the waiting room at Scranton, with the light fixtures lining the tops of those high-backed benches -- so tall that I couldn't see over them even if I stood on the bench, which I was repeatedly asked not to do. Eventually we boarded a train that originated in Scranton after dark and took us eastward, and I remember my brother being put out that it wasn't the real Phoebe, which still hadn't shown up.

On the return trip, though, we rode the Phoebe, and my brother knew the route by heart -- the high line across western NJ, then snaking through the Delaware Water Gap, up into the Poconos and down the Roaring Brook gorge into Scranton. I remember staring out the window and the sensation of passing freight cars at speed and the spray of new-fallen snow that the train kicked up as it raced through the countryside.

In a couple of years, the Phoebe Snow was gone, though the Erie Lackawanna still had another train, the Lake Cities, that my brother and grandparents rode occasionally through the late '60s till it too was gone.

The Phoebe Snow will remain on my bucket list forever... because it is gone forever... but I will never stop dreaming about this beautiful train that wound its way from Hoboken to Chicago through some of the most beautiful scenery in America. Yes, like so many others... I am grieving the loss of such amazing RR wonder!

"At the turn of the 20th century, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad burned anthracite coal to power its steam locomotives and advertised the cleaner coal with a series of ditties about Phoebe Snow, a fictitious woman who wore white when riding the trains."

While not possible to physically board the Phoebe Snow... pictures do help!

 

[jpakala]

My favorite memory is a 1964 trip on the all-firstclass Super Chief with its dome car that had rotating parlor car seats except for coach-style seats on either side right up facing the front windows. The diner was like a 5-star restaurant if not nicer. One midday meal when the diner was full Mom & I were taken into the front of the next car to dine (by ourselves as it turned out) in the Turquoise Room, a private group dining room on the main floor in front of the dome. Its rearward wall had the illuminated inset turquoise jewel-like decoration Santa Fe used in magazine ads for the train, and we sat right below it like the ads showed. It was the trip of a lifetime. Dad had to work and my siblings were on their own by then, so only Mom & I could go. We returned east on The Chief in the car that spent a day up at the Grand Canyon. Leaving the Canyon, I went to the rear to take photos from a chartered coach whose group had some members miss the train. Suddenly a motorcoach with horn blaring passed the train on a distant road and we began to stop. Across the sagebrushy terrain came the Black church women who had missed the departure and I was honored to be part of a joyous, laughter-filled reunion!

 

[Bob Dylan]

My favorite memory is a 1964 trip on the all-firstclass Super Chief with its dome car that had rotating parlor car seats except for coach-style seats on either side right up facing the front windows. The diner was like a 5-star restaurant if not nicer. One midday meal when the diner was full Mom & I were taken into the front of the next car to dine (by ourselves as it turned out) in the Turquoise Room, a private group dining room on the main floor in front of the dome. Its rearward wall had the illuminated inset turquoise jewel-like decoration Santa Fe used in magazine ads for the train, and we sat right below it like the ads showed. It was the trip of a lifetime. Dad had to work and my siblings were on their own by then, so only Mom & I could go. We returned east on The Chief in the car that spent a day up at the Grand Canyon. Leaving the Canyon, I went to the rear to take photos from a chartered coach whose group had some members miss the train. Suddenly a motorcoach with horn blaring passed the train on a distant road and we began to stop. Across the sagebrushy terrain came the Black church women who had missed the departure and I was honored to be part of a joyous, laughter-filled reunion!

Yall were some of the lucky ones that got to dine in the Turquoise Room!

I got to ride on the Super Chief in a Roomette, and eat in the Diner Once, all that I could afford!

 

[20th Century Rider]

Oh my Jim... now you got me wanting to go back in time... again... because the Super Chief to me as a grade school kid was just a pipe dream. I gotta be honest... I was daydreaming in my 4th grade class about going out West on the Chief... and got in trouble for not paying attention to a most boring instructor!!!

So do you remember what you had in that dining car???

I did go on the NP Mainstreeter after college in the late 60's and remembered the Idaho Potato. I was in coach and brought lots of bread and bologna with me... and treated myself to the dining car once... that potato was all I did get but the very nice waiter gave me lots of sour cream, butter, chives, and other toppings. I do remember that!

Many cheers... and a toast... to another dream that got away!

 

[railiner]

Did you cover the whole route from Chicago to Hoboken? So much of it is gone now, especially the western end. Even when I was tooling around Ohio in the early '90s, the tracks and most of the stations were no more, and it was hard to tell in some places where the right of way had been.

All the way from Dearborn Station to Hoboken. The Lake Cities "rubbed shoulder's" with the glamorous Santa Fe trains, at its Chicago terminal, but was a "lone orphan" there. At the Hoboken end, the E-L was everything, with its diesel and electric commuter's...

 

[Asher]

Interesting the similarities between the EMD E and F units to the Siemens units today. EMD or GM understood aerodynamics, The E unts could debut today and still look the part in the 21st century.

Plus they had a 2 stroke 567 turbocharged engine that howled.

 

[railiner]

My favorite memory is a 1964 trip on the all-firstclass Super Chief with its dome car that had rotating parlor car seats except for coach-style seats on either side right up facing the front windows. The diner was like a 5-star restaurant if not nicer. One midday meal when the diner was full Mom & I were taken into the front of the next car to dine (by ourselves as it turned out) in the Turquoise Room, a private group dining room on the main floor in front of the dome. Its rearward wall had the illuminated inset turquoise jewel-like decoration Santa Fe used in magazine ads for the train, and we sat right below it like the ads showed. It was the trip of a lifetime. Dad had to work and my siblings were on their own by then, so only Mom & I could go. We returned east on The Chief in the car that spent a day up at the Grand Canyon. Leaving the Canyon, I went to the rear to take photos from a chartered coach whose group had some members miss the train. Suddenly a motorcoach with horn blaring passed the train on a distant road and we began to stop. Across the sagebrushy terrain came the Black church women who had missed the departure and I was honored to be part of a joyous, laughter-filled reunion!

The Super Chief was certainly a wonderful train. Superb service, and cuisine by Fred Harvey until near the end.
One of the reasons the diner overloaded, was it only offered 36 seats (4 & 2 tops), rather than the standard 48 (4 & 4). Hence the need for the Turquoise Room in the adjacent lounge. And while those rotating dome seats were very luxurious, they meant only 16 rather than the standard 24 dome seats shared by the entire train. That said, I loved those lounge cars. I rode them in their latter life, when they were remodeled. I absolutely loved those shaded table lamps, with their brass cylinder's featuring star shaped pin holes, where an internal light projected stars on the walls. I can't find a photo of them on the 'net...

 

[railiner]

Plus they had a 2 stroke 567 turbocharged engine that howled.

Don't you mean supercharged? I don't think the E's and F's were turbocharged.
The superchargers were necessary to scavenge the exhaust from the 2 cycle engine....

 

[Asher]

Don't you mean supercharged? I don't think the E's and F's were turbocharged.
The superchargers were necessary to scavenge the exhaust from the 2 cycle engine....

Turbchargers run off of the exhaust gasses. Superchargers run off of the crankshaft. The E's and F's were using a mechanical operarted type Turbo, later EMD locomotive engines changed to a clutch driven Turbo.
The reason they are mechanically operated is because it allows the engine to increase the HP at a low RPM, giving them a lot of grunt they wouldn't have otherwise. The clutch type was a system created by General Motors. A big game changer.

 

[railiner]

Turbchargers run off of the exhaust gasses. Superchargers run off of the crankshaft. The E's and F's were using a mechanical operarted type Turbo, later EMD locomotive engines changed to a clutch driven Turbo.
The reason they are mechanically operated is because it allows the engine to increase the HP at a low RPM, giving them a lot of grunt they wouldn't have otherwise. The clutch type was a system created by General Motors. A big game changer.

Early EMD engines, including the E's and F's, did not have turbochargers. They were naturally aspirated engines, that had Roots type blowers just to scavenge the exhaust gases, required in their 2 stroke design. The later model EMD's replaced this with the turbo-compressor system, which as you mentioned, was gear driven at low engine speeds, and then switched to the turbo at higher engine speeds...

 

[Seaboard92]

Wow Railiner... Seaboard was an amazing rail system... hard to find pics unless one really investigates. Don't know how accurate these are... let us know. Even harder to find youtube vids of the amazing equipment... even with Greenfrog... but when I viewed that sun-lounge sleeper it just took my breath away!

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The Hollywood Beach still exists. In fact its running a public charter trip in April from St. Louis, MO to Kansas City, MO and back on April 10-11 to benefit the restoration of another Seaboard car the original observation car from the Silver Meteor (1939). You can message me for information because I know the trip proprietor and can send you his contact. (I have no vested interest in this trip at all. Just mentioning seeing the car came up)

 

[Asher]

Early EMD engines, including the E's and F's, did not have turbochargers. They were naturally aspirated engines, that had Roots type blowers just to scavenge the exhaust gases, required in their 2 stroke design. The later model EMD's replaced this with the turbo-compressor system, which as you mentioned, was gear driven at low engine speeds, and then switched to the turbo at higher engine speeds...
[/QUOTE
A little difference in terminology, were on the same page. Jimmy 2 Smoker with a turbo.

 

[WWW]

The Hollywood Beach still exists. In fact its running a public charter trip in April from St. Louis, MO to Kansas City, MO and back on April 10-11 to benefit the restoration of another Seaboard car the original observation car from the Silver Meteor (1939). You can message me for information because I know the trip proprietor and can send you his contact. (I have no vested interest in this trip at all. Just mentioning seeing the car came up)

3 Photos of the Hollywood Beach and 1 of the Hickory Creek
These cars will be in the consist of the ACE (Autumn Colors Express- Huntington WV October 21-24)











For more info and photos - LINK Tickets! - Autumn Colors Express

 

[20th Century Rider]

S

3 Photos of the Hollywood Beach and 1 of the Hickory Creek
These cars will be in the consist of the ACE (Autumn Colors Express- Huntington WV October 21-24)

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For more info and photos - LINK Tickets! - Autumn Colors Express

Sounds like an amazing fall trip in a truly beautiful part of the country. Although at $599 a pop for Chairman's class seems mucho dinero! Is that per couple or per person / and $1200 per couple$$$

Looks like beautifully restored cars

 

[Ferroequinologist]

I had forgotten that many top trains carried an ORG aboard. Pullman cars also carried "Hotel Red Books", and Western Union Telegraph blanks, which you could send enroute.
https://www.familytree.com/blog/1917-hotel-red-book-and-directory/
My family used to take my grandfather to Penn Station, NY each winter, and put him on a Seaboard train to Miami. The last time, was in 1956. I now know it was a Seaboard, because I recall the distinctive stainless steel. ACL trains were painted. The most 'exotic' car on the Meteor, was the 'sun-lounge' sleeper, with its glass roof panels and large side windows.

The later merged SCL's William Rice maintained top-notch service, right up to the advent of Amtrak...the winter only Florida Special was a superb train with its candle-light dinners, and recreation car features and activities...

I remember those sun lounges. They ran for a long time. I also remember the fabulous food. The most memorable breakfast I've ever had was on an SCL train. The waiter brought a large oval plate artfully laden with light, fluffy French toast, confectioner's sugar sprinkled on top. Not only was the French toast the most delicious I've ever had, it was served in an appealing way that would please the most aesthetically minded Japanese foodie. On another SCL trip I remarked to the waiter that the salad dressing was the best I'd ever had. He went into the dining car and returned with a bottle with the SCL label on it. They were actually selling it.

 

[railiner]

S

Sounds like an amazing fall trip in a truly beautiful part of the country. Although at $599 a pop for Chairman's class seems mucho dinero! Is that per couple or per person / and $1200 per couple$$$

Looks like beautifully restored cars

If it's the Sun Lounge of the "Hollywood Beach" you desire to ride, you don't have to pay nearly that much, according to the linked brochure...
To ride in the lounge portion, its $299. per person, or if you want to ride in one of that car's bedrooms, it's $319. per person...
https://www.autumncolorexpresswv.com/tickets/