The Great Passenger Train Drag Race - Chapter 1

[dabug]

Thanks, number9.  If you haven't done so yet, be sure to check out the other two chapters already posted.

[number 9]

You're a good storyteller. I look forward to the next chapter.

[dabug]

You can probably detect my signature is meant to be tongue in cheek and a bit facetious, BaltACD.  Your comments are well founded, however.   

[BaltACD]

dabug - regarding you signature...

The railroads of the past did it with people....lots and lots of people.

In the late 40's the B&O employed approximately 50K people.  The C&O, ACL, SAL and L&N, which are the major 'fallen flag' components of  CSX at it's inception had relatively similar employee counts during that period.  Add in the territory that came from the ConRail acquisition and the employment counts that those areas had and the total employment of the properties that are today's CSX would have been well over 200K and probably over 250K.  CSX today has less than 30K employees.

[dabug]

Next installment coming soon, Juniatha.

[Juniatha]

Well thanks for telling the story - I'm looking forward to read on ...

= J =

[dabug]

T                 THE GREAT PASSENGER TRAIN DRAG RACE

                                  INTRODUCTION

As this forum invites its readers to share their recollections of railroading, the serialized story that follows evokes pleasant memories for me.  This tale demonstrates that sometimes a railfan is blessed to be in just the right place at just the right time.  It occurred on the Santa Fe Railway in August 1961.  In fact, it happened not once but twice... on the same trip!  All aboard!

 

                                     CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND.  I'm Dave, from Columbus OH.  My paternal grandparents lived in Columbus as well.  In the mid-50s (I'd guess '54 or '55) they traveled to Los Angeles by train to visit another son and his family.  They traveled via the Pennsylvania RR to Chicago and the Santa Fe's El Capitan both ways between Chicago and L.A.  At that time the PRR had morning and overnight round trips between Columbus and Chicago via the Panhandle route through Bradford OH, Marion and Logansport IN, as well as an afternoon round trip known as the Union via Dayton, Richmond IN, and Logansport.  My grandparents utilized the morning train from Columbus to connect with the El Capitan; don't remember how they got back from Chicago. 

In 1958 they traveled to L.A. again, and this time I went with them.  Again, the El Capitan was used in both directions between Chicago and L.A., my first exposure to Santa Fe's superlative equipment and service.  By this time the PRR had but two round trips left between Columbus and Chicago, and they both traveled via Dayton and Richmond, marrying or divorcing Cincinnati-Chicago trains at Richmond.  The Union was now the morning departure from Columbus, though still scheduled out of Chicago in mid-afternoon and into Columbus shortly before midnight; we utilized this train in both directions between Columbus and Chicago.  The overnight train was known as the Buckeye.  Ironically, I remember almost nothing about the SF portion of that trip (don't know why; maybe I just couldn't wrap my young mind around a passenger operation of the caliber of Santa Fe's.)  But I do remember several interesting vignettes from the PRR portion of the trip.  To wit:

• Our consist from Columbus was hardly impressive - two EMD F cab units in Brunswick green pulling two coaches and two express-reefers or -boxcars, in that order. Scheduled departure was around 0730 as I recall.
• We must have run late to Richmond, for as we were waiting for the train from Cincinnati to arrive, the westbound Penn Texas caught up to us and pulled in. I knew it was that train because of the MOPAC cars in its consist. (I think the gap between our departure from Columbus and the later scheduled time of the Penn Texas there was about a half-hour or so.)
• On the return trip, since the combined Union (to Cincinnati and Columbus) had a mid-afternoon departure from Chicago, my grandparents and I were in the diner for dinner when we hit the Logansport IN area. On the northwest side of town is the junction with the PRR line up from Indianapolis and Louisville, a point known as Van on the PRR. To my surprise, as we passed that junction, there was a northbound passenger train awaiting our passage in order to enter the line to Chicago... a train behind beautiful purple and silver ACL diesels. I remember exclaiming out loud that I didn't know Atlantic Coast Line served that area. (In my then 14-year-old ignorance or naiveté I didn't know about the South Wind and run-through diesels. That sighting may have planted the seed that germinated into the opinion I still hold that ACL's purple and silver was the best railroad streamline-era paint scheme.)
• After splitting off the Cincinnati train at Richmond, our consist back to Columbus was identical to that on our westbound trip. We were late again, and the oft-cited observation that trains appear to run faster after dark occurred to me that night, as we seemingly raced eastward toward Columbus. To no avail, however, as we were around two hours late getting back... with some of that delay occurring within walking distance of the station! Here's the reason.
• This PRR line west from Columbus was double-track as far as Xenia OH. But only the westbound main had a connecting track into or out of the Columbus station. Both mains otherwise served as a freight bypass line around the station. So any eastbound passenger train coming into town on the eastbound main had to cross over to the westbound main at a point about a quarter-mile short of the station in order to gain access to the station platforms. We stopped dead just short of that crossover that night, and had to await the passage of two westbound PRR passenger trains in order for our train to get into the station. One was probably the St. Louisan, itself running late; the other sched I'm guessing was a mail train.
• After they passed, we negotiated the crossover and ambled into the station at approximately 0130 versus a scheduled arrival time somewhere around 2330-2345. Not all was lost, however - there, several tracks over, was C&O's Sportsman, its attractive streamlined cars shining under the platform lights. At that time of night, it would have been the northbound side of that train. (An aside for C&O fans: of the five railroads that once provided passenger service to Columbus in the postwar era, only the C&O's through trains had to back into or out of the station, depending on their direction of travel. Why? Because the C&O's north/south mainline passed by about a mile west of Union Station.)

Despite its unimpressive consist and tardy performance, I'm very glad I had the opportunity to ride the Columbus section of the Union back in 1958.  Before the next year was out, the train had been stricken from the timecard.

By June of 1961 the public school system deemed I had been properly edumakated (guess I fooled them...), and I graduated from high school.  My parents gave me a choice at that time: go on the traditional senior trip to Washington D.C. (still utilizing rail in that era), or take a trip to L.A. later in the summer to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin, also by train.  Well, to heck with D.C. - give me the l-o-n-g trip to California!  In addition, this time around, a local cousin, Jerry, who is three years younger than me, would go too.  The trip planning resolved itself as follows:

• The westbound trip would be on the El Capitan again, from Chicago to L.A.
• The eastbound trip, however, would be on the Chief from L.A. to Chicago, a train that would be a new experience for me. 
• The Chief's breakfast-time arrival in Chicago enabled a comfortable connection to the Erie-Lackawanna's Lake Cities that we would utilize to Marion OH. a railroad and route new to me.  At Marion my parents would meet us and drive us back to Columbus.   
• As for the segment from Columbus to Chicago, my parents would drive us there, see we got to the station in time for our train, and they would then stay in a downtown hotel overnight. 

So it was that one morning in early August 1961, we picked up my cousin Jerry, and headed for Chicago.  I couldn't have imagined the interesting experiences awaiting us on that trip!

(To be continued...)

 

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