Here's an excellent recollection of train travel "back in the day".  What's your recollection?

 

FIRST PERSON

Train ride to Wisconsin a ’50s treat

Saturday, February 03, 2007

BILL KEARNS

 

As a child in the 1950s, I would visit Grandma and Grandpa for about six weeks every summer in Superior, Wis. Mom and I would ride a train up, and, a few weeks later, Dad would drive up. Then we’d all return to Columbus in the car. The train ride to Superior, on the western end of Lake Superior, was something I looked forward to for months.

 

For more information, please click the link.

http://dispatch.com/features-story.php?story=dispatch/2007/02/03/20070203-B1-01.html

I have a few...but since I'm from Illinois originally, what I saw wasn't in Ohio for the most part. The only exception was the 1964 edition of the B&O National Limited, which I rode from St. Louis to Washington DC and back. Still a train of the old order, in the classic Royal Blue and Gray livery and with coaches, sleepers, a slumbercoach a diner...and a round-end obeservation car! I spent mile after mile watching the track and scenery recede from view in that car.

 

I remember my Mom saying the train wasn't near as nice as it was years ago...if only we knew we were riding a bit of history that was soon to disappear!

 

Dinner was a treat...on that blue B&O dining car china...the plates had pictures of historic B&O locomotives around the edges...wow...quite an experience for a boy of 14. We had a friendly crew...the kids in the coach we were in took to calling the porter "chief" because of the hat he wore...

 

It was a ride I'll never forget. Hard to believe that the entire railroad is gone as well as the train itself.

This is more for the benefit of others BuckeyeB and Noozer, but B&O was one of the few Northeastern railroads that ran decent passenger trains near to the end. Many of the railroads from Chicago to the West Coast also ran decent trains, as did some of the Dixie railroads -- Seaboard, Southern, etc.

 

I find it ironic that it's in the Northeastern part of the U.S., from Chicago and St. Louis easterward, where people nowadays say that's where passenger trains make the most sense due to a decent-sized city being every 100-150 miles apart. But that's where the worst passenger trains were run prior to Amtrak. From the 1950s to the coming of Amtrak in 1971, New York Central, Pennsylvania, New Haven and their successor Penn Central ran rattletraps disguised as passenger trains. Erie-Lackawanna was a bit better run, but still hurting financially and it showed in the quality of their trains.

That's true, but this is a nostalgic look back. Even if PRR and NYC trains didn't match what Santa Fe ran, they still could be impressive. A favorite activity of mine was to ride my bike clear across town just to see the Spirit of St. Louis back in 1965. It was still an impressive train: usually 3 E units and a healthy consist, running like a bat out of hell. Pennsy still was trying to run the train like it meant something to them. The other trains were nothing special, but at the time, there were still several trains into St. Louis daily. We had the Spirit of St. Louis, the Penn Texas, an unnamed train that ran overnight to and from Pittsburgh and a mammoth mail train. It wasn't until the mail was pulled off and the Penn Central merger that things really disintegrated.

 

I used to linger at trackside for hours, hoping to see something special and I did. One day the Spirit came up the hill with a huge consist (apparently a special movement). It had close to 20 cars, several of which were Milwaukee Road coaches and what looked like a B&O heavyweight diner, along with the regular consist!! Another time I saw a train come thru and watched as the postal clerk in the mail car snagged a bag of mail at 80 mph. Wow...

 

Another time, the B&O had a derailment and detoured via PRR to St. Louis. A B&O freight, powered by Reading GP-30's and with a wooden caboose was a quite a treat! The rest of the time, I contented myself with endless Pennsy freights with as many as six GP-9's on the point. Then there was the local doing some switching in town with an Alco RS-3 and a drunk brakeman who invited us up into the cab. We were promptly booted out by the engineer, who did not see the humor in his tipsy brakie! Sure do miss those days

I wasn't even born until "the day" was a few short years from the end. I have a vague recollection of being in Tower City when my brother and I rode the Red Line with my mom from East Cleveland, but my first real train trip wasn't until I rode the Broadway Limited in 1995.  Hell, that was Amtrak and I've still never recovered.  Nor am I able leave the often frustrating and depressing pursuit of passenger rail advocacy and there's no 12-step program that will help.  Would have been nice to ride the 20th Century Limited in it's glory days, but then I'd be depressed for sure since it's demise. 

Additional: B&O was "my" road, as many of my relatives worked there, mostly at the division point in Washington IN. It was always a point of pride that the B&O was the last to give up on passenger trains in the east and that it had such a history of being an innovator and had that B&O tradition of good service. KJP is right: B&O held out to the end.

 

Probably the best roads in the mid-'60's were Santa Fe (no question there), UP, GN, NP in the west, Burlington, IC, Wbash/N&W in the midwest, ACL/SAL in the southeast and the B&O in the east. The rest were indifferent (PRR, NYC) or hostile (SP). Marginal roads, such as the Frisco ended all service during this time.

 

It would have been interesting if Amtrak had kept all the equipment it could have gotten its hands on and subcontracted with Santa Fe and SCL to run the trains! THEY would have done things right!!

Still more...this time about service levels in St. Louis in the mid-1960's..

 

B&O had two daily trains: The National limited and Metropolitan, mostly a mail train

 

MP had the Texas Eagle, two or three St. Louis-Kansas City trains and remnants of other trains to Texas.

 

N&W (Wabash) had the City of St. Louis, which was a UP train to the west, as well as the Blue Bird and Banner Blue to Chicago, and the Wabash Cannonball and the Detroit Limted overnight to that city.

 

GM&O ran the Abraham Lincoln, The Limited (formerly the Alton Limited) and the Midnight Special, mostly mail w/a couple of coaches and a sleeper

 

NYC ran only a mail train with a rider coach

 

PRR had the Spirit of St. Louis, The Penn Texas and the overnight run to Pittsburgh

 

IC ran the Green Diamond to Chicago and three connecting trains to Carbondale for points south

 

Frisco was down to one train to Oklahoma City as was Burlington with a train to Des Moines (I think) and L&N (The Georgian)

What is truly sad about this thread is that if you were born after the mid 70's in much of Central and Southern Ohio, there is no "back in the day" or fond recollections of trips on a train. That lack of a historical reference and perspective is part of what makes it so hard for the average Ohioan under the age of 40 including some of our legislators) to begin to grasp the concept of what really good passenger rail service can be.  That fact, in turn, makes it more difficult for those of us advocating for more and better passenger service or true high-speed rail.

 

But I have found that when many of these same people actually see what modern passenger rail service looks like, or if they have had the opportunity to go overseas and experience it first hand, they not only grasp it, but are more likely to demand to know why we don't have service of this level in our own country. I know a few of you (like Gildone) have had this experience.

 

My own Ohio rail experience dates back to December, 1971: traveling back East from college in Missouri on the Amtrak version of the "National Limited", which was a virtual rainbow of castoff passenger cars and locomotives from the various railroads which they foisted off on Amtrak and pretty much said "Go ahead and try to run a railroad."

 

Despite the generally poor equipment (like a heating unit breaking down and turning my coach car into a virtual deep freeze), I still enjoyed the adventure, including sitting in the dining car at the crack of dawn for what was still an amazingly good breakfast, meeting a lovely young co-ed who was travelling all the way to New York, and having the chance to stop off in Columbus (due to a delay) long enough to get out and walk around Columbus Union Station.  This was just a few years before it was torn down, so I still treasure that opportunity.

 

But my point is that we need to be advocating for a system so that our children, friends and family can someday have their own memories.... and maybe even look back at us and say that we managed to create something that was good not only for their own mobility, but for their quality of life and the environment.

My first train ride was in 1971, but wasn't in Ohio. And it was on a tourist train, the Strasburg Railroad. I do recall the train approaching a multi-track railroad with wires over it -- Penn Central/Amtrak's Harrisburg-Philadelphia main line. At the end of the line, I remember the steam locomotive running around our train to take us back in the other direction. And I remember my face hurting. When I see photographs my father took of me on that train, I know why. I was smiling from ear-to-ear in every picture.

 

My first and second train rides in Ohio were in 1976 and in 1981. And both were on a tourist train -- the Cuyahoga Valley Line. Both times the train was pulled the steam locomotive 4070, and in 1976 departed from the Cleveland Zoo. In 1981, it departed from a spot just north of Granger Road.

 

My first trip on Amtrak was in 1982, from Flagstaff AZ to Los Angeles. It was an overnight trip, and I stayed up all night in the sleeper to look out the windows at the moonlit desert while listening to music on the headphones. It was amazing scenery, even at night. Every so often my mother would wake and look over to the window-side seat, only to see me still looking at the passing scenery. She would get me to lower the headphones and encourage me to sleep. But I couldn't. I may have nodded off a total of an hour that night.

 

My first Amtrak trip in Ohio was from Cleveland to Chicago in 1984. My father and I went to check out the 50th anniversary of the Burlington Zephyr at the Museum of Science and Industry. We got to the museum from downtown Chicago by riding a CTA bus through some truly "lovely" South Side neighborhoods on a 90-degree day. We took an air-conditioned cab back downtown as a thunderstorm hit. It was a cool ride, and I had been bugging my father about taking the trip all summer. He was switching careers to real estate, and didn't have the money or time for an out-of-town adventure so I let it go. But when he got his first listing sold, I figured he'd be in a real good mood. So I asked him again and he said yes. Pretty savvy for a 17-year-old, eh? (I was 17, not my father!  :-o )

I consider myself very fortunate to have seen and experienced a small part of the old order and it makes me sad that it's gone and angry at the way the passenger train was killed. Yes, that's right: killed. The train did not die a natural death. We must never forget that.

 

I rode many trains out of St. Louis and I can only recall one that was empty. That was the GM&O's Abraham Lincoln near the end of its southbound run into St. Louis. Every other train was well patronized and this at a time when the auto was definitely an object of public affection.

 

By the way, I never was able to sleep on a train either. I was too excited!

The Lackawana "Phoebe Snow" operated between Hoboken, NJ (but connected to NY City by ferry) and Chicago.  It was a joint effort with Nickel Plate which operated the train west of Buffalo.  It went through Conneaut, Cleveland, Toledo, then onto to Chicago.

 

The Lackawana never tried to market the train to compete with the speed of the New York Central's 20th Century Limited or the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broadway Limited.  It couldn't because it was a 23 hour schedule.  They marketed it as a more relaxed route for discerning travelers who didn't have to be in a hurry and wanted to enjoy the scenery of NE Pennsylvania and southern New York.  Like Amtrak today, it was a middle-of-the-night train in Ohio. 

 

I found this video on You Tube.  It was shot in the 1950s.  The guy who made the video bought the 16 mm films used for it at a garage sale.  The man who made the films had died and his family wanted to get rid of the stuff. They referred to it as "his railroad junk".  The footage was shot in NE Pennsylvainia:

 

The Lackawana "Phoebe Snow" operated between Hoboken, NJ (but connected to NY City by ferry) and Chicago. It was a joint effort with Norfolk & Western which operated the train west of Buffalo. It went through Conneaut, Cleveland, Toledo, then onto to Chicago via Detroit and southern Michigan.

 

Actually through cars were forwarded by the Nickel Plate RR and ran to Chicago via Fort Wayne, not through Michigan or even Toledo.

 

 

You know, though my folks are 71 and 68, they have been exclusively car and airplane travelers. I think my mother rode a train once. I suppose that's a consequence of post-WWII Ohio.

The Lackawana "Phoebe Snow" operated between Hoboken, NJ (but connected to NY City by ferry) and Chicago.  It was a joint effort with Norfolk & Western which operated the train west of Buffalo.  It went through Conneaut, Cleveland, Toledo, then onto to Chicago via Detroit and southern Michigan. 

 

KJP wrote: 

Actually through cars were forwarded by the Nickel Plate RR and ran to Chicago via Fort Wayne, not through Michigan or even Toledo.  I'll look again. 

 

 

You're right about the Nickel Plate.  I got confused.  Lucius Beebe's book The Trains We Rode, had a schedule in it with the train going through Detroit.  It surprised me.  I didn't have the book in front of me last night when I posted this.  I guess I'm confused.  It's at the office because I lent it to someone.  I'll look again.  In the mean time, I edited my post. 

 

 

My batting average isn't very good for my last two posts, Sorry, everybody!    Is there a dunce cap emoticon? 

 

 

 

I checked the book.  I was right in a way, but overall still wrong (my, that's political speak, isn't it?). Prior to the Lackawana re-branding their NY-CHI train the "Phoebe Snow", it was called the "Lackawana Limited."  According to the schedule in "The Trains We Rode", there was a time when the Lackawana Limited ran through cars on the Michigan Central via Detroit to Chicago. The primary route was still on the Nickel Plate.  Judging by the type of print on the schedule, it looks like it must have been pre-1930, maybe?

 

 

The Santa Fe railroad never served Ohio, but railroads passing through Ohio had many sleeping and lounge cars owned and operated by the Pullman Co. (a concept that should be revisited today!). So this funny ditty would have applied to Pullman accommodations to/through Ohio....

______________

 

In the latest Brass Switch Key News is an explanation by a Pullman Conductor of the price differential between and upper and lower berth.

 

The Pullman Conductor on Santa Fe RR "Fast 15" was once asked about the difference of 50 cents in price between the upper and the lowerberth, and this is how he explained it.

 

"The lower is higher than the upper.

The higher price... is for the lower.

If you want it lower... you'll have to go higher.

We sell the upper lower than the lower.

Most people don't like the upper, although it is lower, on account of its being higher.

When you hire an upper, you have to get up to go to bed and get down to get up."

 

Did you get that ? !