An Official Guide Requiem...

[GeoffS]

The contents (of the Guides) are golden. Amen!

GS

[ZephyrOverland]

A few weeks ago, Kevin Keefe wrote about the discontinuance of the Official Guide in one of his blog postings. I saw it just recently and had to pen a reponse, since I am very familiar with the Guide, in collecting past issues and using them for research purposes for a number of decades. The following is what I wrote:

 

I think there is some confusion about the demise of the Official Railway Guide. The passenger edition of the Official Railway Guide was published 1974-1995. It is the freight edition of the Official Guide that has been discontinued, with most contents of the Official Railway Guide being folded into the Pocket List of Railroad Officials, another IHS Markit publication, effective second quarter 2020.

 

This does not lessen the need to pay tribute to The Official Guide of the Railways and Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico [sic], Canada, Mexico, and Cuba.

 

If one was to distill the essence of the Official Guide, it can be considered akin to a paper database of railroad industry information that was published monthly. Known as The Traveler’s Official Guide of the Railways until June 1900, a Moody’s 1901 ad describes the contents of the Official Guide:

  "The Standard Reference Book used by all railway officials for the business transacted between the several companies.  The List of Officers and other information are corrected up to the date of each monthly issue.

The Editorial Department, in addition to general railway information, contains a monthly synopsis of the Proceedings of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The Time Tables published in its columns are compiled directly from the Official Time Tables which are used by the employes, and from information furnished by the Officers in Charge of Time Table Department of the several roads.

It contains, in addition to the Lists of Officers and their addresses, which are published at the head of the Time Tables, an Official List of the Officers in charge of General Passenger Department, with the names of the parties to whom remittances and on whom drafts for the settlement of such accounts should be made; the Official List of Designating Numbers assigned to the several transportation lines and used by the Passenger and Accounting Departments; an Official List of Purchasing Agents, with their addresses; a list of General Baggage Agents; a list of Railway Commissions of the various States, Traffic Associations, their Officers, etc.; also a table showing the Mileage of each road, and the Sleeping Car and Express Company operating over such.

The Index of Railway Stations contains the names of every railroad station in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with the State and the railroad on which they are situated, corrected monthly.  There is also a list of old and new names of stations, the names which have been recently changed.

The standard of time by with each road is run is noticed at the head of each table, and in addition to this, a page devoted to a table of the names of the roads running by the Federal standards.  Upon the front page of the cover of the Official Guide is a diagram showing the standards of time in use in the principal cities.

A large number of fine Sectional Maps, showing the lines of the several roads, appear throughout the book.  Also a new dissected map, corrected to date, covering the whole United States, Canada and Mexico (north of Vera Cruz).  A full list of names by which the various railroads in the country have formerly been known, with their present official names, is also a feature.  The gauge of each road is shown.  Morning trains are distinguished from afternoon trains by varying style of type.

Also, Maps, Time Tables, and a list of Offices of Railroad and Steamship Lines in CUBA and PORTO RICO.

For sale at all prominent News-stands and on Railway Trains.  Subscription price 4.00 per annum.  Single copies 50 cents."

Before the Official Guide was established, several publications offered railroad schedules and information to the industry and the public. Unfortunately, the quality and accuracy of their contents were subject to question. One of the problems was that these publications required payment by the railroads to have their information included. Otherwise, the publications would only include sketchy information for those lines, or none at all. One of the primary motivations for the establishment of the Official Guide was to have an industry-sanctioned publication with reliable information. Unlike other publications, the Guide publisher would accept and publish railroad-submitted personnel and schedule information at no charge, with the railroads having the option of including maps, advertisements, and other embellishments for a fee. Eventually, the competing publications folded or were bought out by the publisher of the Guide, with some of the latter becoming regional pocket editions of the Official Guide.

The types of contents changed over time, as some of the information was transferred to an addendum, the Quarterly Supplement of the Official Guide. Eventually, other information, including airline and steamship schedules and accommodations, was included.

The utility of the Guide was such that it saw use all over the industry: corporate headquarters, individual stations, ticket offices, even in railroad club and lounge cars. Other parts of the economy benefited from its use as well: travelers, shippers, educational institutions, government, the military, and of course, railroad enthusiasts.

As for the rationale of where railroads were placed in the Guide, placements were reflective of a New York City-centric view of the railroad world.  Before WWI the general progression of railroads within the guide ran this way:

Northeastern roads

Eastern Canada

Eastern - Midwestern roads

Mid Atlantic - Midwestern roads

Northwest roads

Canadian transcontinental roads

Midwest - Western/Southwestern roads

Western roads

Southern and Southeast roads

Mexican roads

Note that the southern and southeastern roads were put near the end of the Guide, possibly reflecting a post-Civil War bias.  For several years, Florida East Coast had the dubious distinction of being at the end of the US section of the Guide, followed by the Mexican lines. Of course, railroad placements were influenced by the railroads themselves, especially if two roads became amalgamated in any way short of a merger.

When the U.S. took over the railroads during WWI, the publication adjusted to the tenor of the times, relaying USRA information, directives, and appropriate propaganda. The railroad placement layout in the Guide also went through a total revamp. Eventually, the revised Guide layout consisted of two main sections: railroads that were running under the USRA, and those that weren't. The placement of roads in the Guide now reflected USRA-developed administrative regions: Eastern Region, Allegheny Region, Pocahontas Region, Southern Region, Central Western Region, Southwestern Region, Northwestern Region. 

The placement of roads in the former section became more logical:

Northeast lines

East-Midwest lines

South and southeast lines

Midwest lines

Mid-continent - Texas Lines

Midwest - west lines

Western lines

Midwest - northwest Lines

After the railroads were returned to private hands in 1920, the layout of the Guide was again revamped, with the two sections mentioned previously being combined into one, and reflecting the geographical layout of the USRA-controlled lines mentioned earlier.  This layout generally remained the same from that point forward.

In the years before WW1, interurbans generally were placed near railroads that were in the same region.  During WW1, when the layout of the Guide was revamped into two main sections (USRA controlled vs. non-USRA controlled), interurbans were all put in the second section.  After WW1 when the Guide layout was again revamped, interurbans, for the most part, remained in the back.

 

The publication itself reflected the growth, maturity, and evolution of the industry. Early issues had about 300 pages, but page numbers didn’t exist. The only item that was numbered in the publication was the tables. As time went on page counts increased: an 1883 issue had about 480 pages, an 1890 issue had about 768 pages, increasing to 1056 pages by 1900. A 1916 issue had around 1600 pages, reflecting the industry’s mileage peak, and the publications page peak was achieved late in 1929, with 1760 pages. Afterward, page counts went down, so by the May 1971 issue page count was only 812.

 

In 1950 the publisher released a pamphlet, A Book That Gathers No Dust, reviewing the history of the Official Guide and detailing what was involved in producing each issue.

 

By the early 1970s, the usefulness of the Guide for railroad passengers was marginal since most of the nation’s rail passenger service schedules could easily fit into an Amtrak folder. In 1974, the publisher of the Official Guide sought to rectify this by launching a passenger-only version of the Official Guide, containing US (Amtrak and non-Amtrak, plus some commuter information), Canadian and Mexican schedules. The existing Guide was rebranded as freight-only geared to the industry and shippers. The passenger version was physically larger, had updated graphics, layout, and type, and included rail history and travel articles. However, by 1976 the publication was becoming more utilitarian, with cheaper paper, fewer graphics, and the inclusion of Amtrak information beyond schedules. For a while, the publication published Amtrak fare information and policies, in essence becoming a paper database again. The passenger edition lasted until 1995.

 

The freight edition saw changes of its own, with a larger format, and a reshuffling of content, reflecting what was still useful for the industry and shippers. By this time, ownership of the Guide changed hands several times and ended up being owned by British-based IHS Markit, who ended publication in mid-2020. 

 

The Official Guide has been my primary railroadiana collecting interest, research go-to, and time machine window since high school in the mid-1970s. I consider myself a passenger train researcher/historian and have been using the Guide as a primary research tool for several decades. I rode C&NW’s Twin Cities “400” with my parents as a toddler on several occasions before the train's demise, but I consider my interest in passenger trains established after riding Amtrak’s Broadway Limited in 1972. Seeing all those Amtrak trains in their national folder held my interest for a while, but I wanted to see what operated before May 1, 1971. As a new reader of Trains magazine in the early 1970’s, I saw constant references to the Official Guide, which piqued my interest. Finally, I took the plunge, purchasing a November 1960 issue from a classified ad seller in Trains. For someone who started training in the Amtrak era, the Guide was nirvana. All those passenger trains! Shortly thereafter I started attending railroadiana shows and started picking up more issues. Also, I would respond to ads in Trains magazine for issues for sale. I dealt with one dealer, Arnold Joseph, who had a railroadiana store near Penn Station in New York. I bought many older issues from him via mail or through personal visits. Also, in the late 1970s, there was a store in New York called the Broadway Limited Antique Company, that was located in the same building where the Official Guide was produced for many years. They had dozens of issues for sale. Unfortunately, being a college kid at the time I had to pick and choose issues carefully, getting the most for my money. Later, when John Martin bought out the entire back inventory of Guides from the publisher, I dealt with him at several railroadiana shows. Over time, railroadiana shows and eBay became my primary vehicles for purchasing Official Guides.

 

Currently, my Official Guide collection runs into multiple hundreds, consisting of more than a million pages, stored in several barrister bookcases or individually wrapped in storage boxes. Yes, it’s a lot of issues, but I enjoy them and use them, for passenger train operations research to use for my writings and input for others’ publications. I can compare an issue of the Guide to a frame of a motion picture, as it shows the North American Passenger train network as it existed for a particular year and month. When you start looking through several issues and comparing data from them, you can develop a linear storyboard, seeing a larger picture and flow of passenger train operations and how each passenger train in question fits within the overall transportation scheme of things.  

 

An obvious challenge of having such a Guide collection is dealing with all that paper. Issues to 1915 were overall printed on better paper. Those issues haven't yellowed as much as later issues and even though I have a number of pre-1915 issues with shot bindings, I have no problem thumbing through them. Issues published between 1915-1935 are a problem, though. They are published on cheaper newsprint and flake easily – I have to tread carefully in using them. Also, issues printed from 1932 to 1937 have lighter imprints, as if the publisher was trying to save on ink costs.

 

There are other aspects of collecting Official Guides that go beyond the books themselves. Some issues contain routing stickers, indicating a pecking order of who receives which issue and when. Usually, a large city railroad office or ticket office, someone who is up in the railroad hierarchy, or a lounge car of a top train will receive a new issue. The next month the issue is sent to another less important entity and the process is repeated for several months until a small station gets a copy that could be six months old. After that, the issue gets “lost” or is sent to a specific department of the railroad for storage. Some railroads, such as Southern Pacific, actually issued bulletins indicating routings for all the Guides they subscribed to.

 

Another aspect of collecting Guides is finding hardbound issues, usually by former well-meaning owners. Also, railroad-issued binders make appropriate parings with issues. Some binders in somber color and design were used in office settings, while others were used in lounge or club cars, the binder having the train name imprinted on the cover. In my collection, I have binders that have seen service on trains such as the Humming Bird, San Francisco Overland Limited, Broadway Limited (the Fleet of Modernism version), and Florida Sunbeam.

 

My apologies for posting such a long response, but an item that had such involvement in the day-to-day workings of the railroad industry for over 150 years and was such an important informational resource outside of the industry deserves additional recognition.

 

Finally, besides the Official Guide reprints that are available for purchase, additional issues in PDF files are available for free viewing and downloading on Google Books. Around 300 issues, from 1874 to 1912, are available to download and come from the libraries of Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan. The quality of the scans admittedly is variable, but the contents are golden.