The Erie Limited in 1929

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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This booklet introduces “the splendid new Erie Limited,” which was inaugurated on June 2, 1929. This train “provides 25 hour service at the lowest fares available.” The train in fact took slightly less than 25 hours to go between New York and Chicago, including the ferry ride between downtown Manhattan and Erie’s train station in Jersey City.

Click image to download a 9.3-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

While New York Central’s and Pennsylvania’s fastest trains, the 20th Century and Broadway, took only 20 hours in 1929, they charged an extra fare of $9.60 — about $175 in today’s money. At least five other NYC and six other PRR New York-Chicago trains charged extra fares as well. Continue reading →

Delaware & Hudson February 1957 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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Yesterday’s timetable was mostly ads and other fluff; the timetables and equipment listings fit on just three pages (plus a half a page for a condensed timetable that was totally unnecessary). D&H apparently recognized that for by 1957 its timetable had shrunk to 8 pages.

Click image to download a 3.1-MB PDF of this 8-page timetable.

The timetable still has a full-page front cover ad that was unchanged from 1954. The condensed schedules are gone, and the remaining schedules fill three pages with a lot of white space, particularly on the third page. The train that terminated at Whitehall is gone but the other trains in yesterday’s 1954 timetable remain. Continue reading →

Delaware & Hudson December 1954 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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The cover shown below is the back cover, while the front cover advertises that Delaware and Hudson had “the fastest train” and “the shortest route” between New York and Montreal. In fact, it had two trains in 1953, the overnight Montreal Limited and the daylight Laurentian.

Click image to download a 6.7-MB PDF of this 12-page timetable.

The Montreal Limited was the fast one, taking a little over nine hours each way while the Laurentian took ten. Usually day trains are faster because overnight passengers are less anxious to arrive quickly, but the Laurentian made quite a few more stops (presumably because local travelers would rather depart or arrive during daytime hours than late at night) than the Limited. Continue reading →

New Haven April 1953 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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Issued about a year-and-a-half after yesterday’s, today’s timetable is back up to 44 pages. Although the half-page ad on the front cover says that “42 new trains added” in 1953, this wasn’t why the page count grew.

Click image to download a 26.8-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable.

Instead, three of them four pages that had been cut from the April 1951 timetable in the September 1951 edition were restored in the 1953 timetable. The fourth page, a full-page ad on the inside back cover, wasn’t restored. Instead, the number of pages on train service between New York and Cape Cod was increased from one to two. This wasn’t because more trains were added on this route; instead, the newer timetable just spread them out more. If 42 trains were added, they must have been added to other timetables without adding to the space requirements for those tables.

New Haven September 1951 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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Yesterday, I noted that the page numbering system, or lack of it, in New Haven timetables was annoying. Also annoying is that the main cover, the one shown below, is on the back. The railroad didn’t take advantage of this by putting a full-page ad on the front cover; instead, about half the page is devoted to a “table of contents” and the other half is an ad.

Click image to download a 25.3-MB PDF of this 40-page timetable.

In yesterday’s timetable, the ad was for Pilgrim Tours of New England, “the ideal way to enjoy your summer vacation.” In today’s, the ad is for through sleeping cars from Boston to Florida. It offered a choice of Seaboard’s Orange Blossom Special to Miami, Tampa, or St. Petersburg or Atlantic’s West Coast Champion to St. Petersburg or Miami. The through cars were only available from mid-December through early April. Continue reading →

New Haven April 1951 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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I find New Haven’s timetables almost as bewildering as Boston & Maine’s. Start with the fact that the railroad didn’t number the pages consecutively but instead put a number on the upper outside corner of each page equal to the number of the first schedule on that page. This particular timetable has a 1 on two different pages, followed by two 2s, one 3, and six 4s, but no 7, 8, or 9 because tables 6 through 9 all fit on one page.

Click image to download a 29.2-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable.

Another issue is that many of the trains are listed several times. Table 1 lists trains from New York to Boston and table 2 lists New York to Springfield while table 4 lists trains from New York to New Haven, including all of the New York to Boston and New York to Springfield already listed. Trying to avoid these duplicate trains, I count close to 200 trains per weekday. That includes about 21 trains that are called Boston commuter trains. Continue reading →

New Haven Pilgrim Tours in 1947

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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After World War II, the New Haven Railroad began offering “Pilgrim Tours” of New England and eastern Canada. This booklet describes 51 two- to fifteen-day tours that were offered in 1947. The tours were unescorted but the ticket prices included transportation, lodging, and most food.

Click image to download a 17.5-MB PDF of this 40-page booklet.

These tours continued through the early 1960s. While the name “Pilgrim Tours” obviously relates to the Pilgrims who colonized New England in 1620, by the late 1950s the tours had expanded first to Washington, DC, and then to Florida. Somehow I doubt any of the original pilgrims ever went to Florida. Continue reading →

Boston & Maine April 1952 Timetable

Posted on by June 16, 2024
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As someone who has spent little time in New England, I find the Boston & Maine to be totally bewildering. The area it served was considerably smaller than my home state of Oregon, which in 1952 was served by five major railroads that operated a total of around 18 passenger trains a day, seven of which served only one city in the state. In that same year, the Boston & Maine operated around 200 passenger trains a day on dozens of different routes — and it was only one of several railroads in New England.

Click image to download a 20.9-MB PDF of this 40-page timetable.

Most of these trains radiated from Boston on four major routes and several minor ones. More than 30 trains a day each went on routes to Concord, Haverhill, and Portsmouth and 18 went on the route to Troy. Not all of these trains went all the way to those destinations but some went beyond those destinations to places such as Portland and White River Junction. Among the trains that didn’t come from Boston were more than a dozen per day out of Springfield and a handful out of Worchester. Continue reading →

Golden Spike Centennial Folio

Posted on by August 5, 2024
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I’ve presented this souvenir of the 1969 Golden Spike Centennial before, but at the time I was unable to make decent reproductions of the locomotive portraits contained inside. Also, I recently learned that the original folio contained four locomotive portraits instead of the two I had. I’ve since acquired one with all four portraits and photographed the portraits, which produced better results than my scanner.

Click image to download a 1.7-MB PDF of this folder.

This was published by the Golden Spike Centennial Celebration Commission and is strange for several reasons. First, although the Last Spike was a joint effort of Union Pacific and Central Pacific (which later merged into Southern Pacific), the back of this folio has a Union Pacific logo with a Big Boy steam locomotive and Centennial Diesel, but no Central Pacific or Southern Pacific logos. This suggests that UP helped pay for these folios, so I’m counting this as UP memorabilia. Continue reading →

Union Pacific May 1969 Timetable

Posted on by August 18, 2024
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Despite the loss of so many trains, Union Pacific still managed to fill a 36-page timetable. This meant there were a lot of blank columns in schedules that once showed several trains and now showed only one.

Click image to download a 22.9-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

This timetable still has separate pages of condensed schedules for Chicago-Los Angeles, Chicago-San Francisco, and Chicago-Portland even though there was only one (in the case of San Francisco) or two trains each way each day. Starting in 1960 or 1961, UP had saved a page by putting the City of Denver on the same page as the City of San Francisco, but it would have been better to combine the City of San Francisco and City of Los Angeles (which were one train east of Ogden) on one page and the City of Portland and City of Denver (which were one train east of Julesburg, Colorado) on another page. Continue reading →