“Take the route of the Phoebe Snow for your vacation,” implores a full-page ad on the front cover of this timetable (the cover below being the back cover). The ad includes photos of Niagara Falls, Delaware Water Gap, Grand Canyon, Old Faithful, and Lake Louise. The Lackawanna only went to the first two of those destinations, but it is conceivable that someone could take the Phoebe Snow on their way to one of the other photographed locations.

Click image to download a 9.2-MB PDF of this 16-page timetable.

In addition to the Phoebe Snow (train 3), the Lackawanna sent three trains a day from New York City (via Hoboken ferry) to Buffalo: the Twilight (#5), the Westerner (#7), and the Owl (#15). All of these trains sent sleeping cars and some sent coaches to Chicago, mostly over the Nickel Plate but the Twilight connected with a New York Central train. From Chicago, of course, people could go anywhere in the West.

These weren’t the fastest trains in the world: the Phoebe Snow and its Nickel Plate connection took 22-2/3 hours to Chicago, while the Westerner took only 20-2/3 hours. In 1950, New York Central and Pennsylvania’s fastest non-extra-fare trains took only 18 hours and the extra-fare 20th Century and Broadway took just 16. But for people living in, say, Scranton, Elmira, or other communities not on the main lines of the bigger railroads, the Lackawanna was a viable option.