The Pennsylvania could match the New York Central’s trains to just about every major city in the East and Midwest except Albany, with the added bonus that Pennsylvania served Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia. In addition to twenty-one trains a day between New York and Washington, PRR had ten trains, plus a mail train, between New York and Chicago, five between New York and St. Louis, two between New York and Detroit, four each between Chicago and Cincinnati and between Chicago and Louisville, and many others. Though World War II had ended the previous August, PRR advertised that sleeping car service that had been “withdrawn by Office of Defense Transportation” had been restored as of March 15, 1946.
Click image to download a 33.1-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.
The cover of this timetable celebrates PRR’s centennial. “Starting with a few trains a day, this growth has been continuous until now 1,340 passenger trains daily traverse the more than 10,114 miles of line of the Pennsylvania Railroad between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.” Imagine, 1,340 trains a day on just one railroad! That’s 1,000 trains more than Amtrak operates today.
The Grif Teller painting used on the timetable cover was also used in this advertisement from the February 18, 1946 issue of Life magazine.
Click image to see a larger (2.0-MB) view of this ad.