Railroad Directions

[Anonymous]

What is the reason that indicating direction for train travel using the time table.It states West bound when the train is actually going North or East bound when going South? How is it indicated when the travel direction is actually East or West?

                                                                                                          dlm

[BigJim]

dlm,

I don't know that I fully understand what it is you are asking, but I'll give it a shot.

My district basically runs North/South. That said, if you look on a map it actually runs Northeast/Southwest. Getting right down to trackside it twists and turns in all sorts of directions, so that even though I'm basically heading north, I may actually be heading east-southeast. Savvy?

Now anytime I am heading North and have to report that you, the trespasser, are standing beside the tracks where you are not supposed to be, from your prospective, you may actually be on the north side of the tracks looking South straight into the sun and watching me pass by from right to left. Now when I tone up the dispatcher to report you, I will tell him that there was a suspicious character on the west side of the tracks (my perspective) mooning me. Are you confused now?

Now if you are talking about train symbols, it used to be common practice in timetables for EVEN numbered trains to go North or East and ODD numbered trains to go South or West. NS has gotten away from that in recent years after the merger with the Southern. Don't ask me why. I'd like to know myself. It is now quite common to see an odd number train go East and an even number train go West.

[timz]

Once upon a time "regular" trains had numbers, and westward trains were usually odd-- but "regular" trains don't exist in the rulebook any more. The "symbol" numbers that some railroads use are a different matter, and no need for any such convention there. Santa Fe started a new numeric symbol system circa 1972 that included lots of westward-even and eastward-odd.

[jimrice4449]

As stated above westward trains would have odd numbers and eastward even.   There might be some confusion for non-RRrs between COMPASS east or west and OPERATIONAL e or w.   For example, on the SP any train heading towards San Francisco was westbound.   Th e West Coast was a secondary psgr train from Portland to LA.  From Portland to Sacramento it was no. 16 but from Sacramento it became no. 15.   It started out as a westbound and then became an eastbound even though it was traveling south.   There, doesn't that clear everything up nicely?   When I was the third trick operator at Saugus and a train would call in some problem requiring me to call the local sheriff I had to be sure the train meant compass east or west rather the RR sincefor the run through Soeldad Canyon a westbound train was actually heading east and then be sure the sheriff's office knew that when I said 2 miles east of Lang I was speaking geographical rather than RR east.   (That example train, the West Coast, traversed the Tehachapi Loop in the course of which it would at various points be heading, litterally, in every point of the compass, but as far as the RR was concerned it was going east for the entire circut.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

As mentioned in the other postings, direction is indicated in the timetable for operational reasons.  Trains traveling in one direction were superior to those in the opposite direction under timetable and train order operating rules.

As an example, trains traveling north out of Grand Central Terminal are westbound by the timetable, and do in fact head west by compass when they reach Albany.  On the other hand, trains leaving Penn Station toward Philadelphia are also westbound and continue westbound when they pass Philadelphia toward Harrisburg, but become southbound when they pass Philadelphia toward Washington. 

[chad thomas]

Once upon a time "regular" trains had numbers, and westward trains were usually odd-- but "regular" trains don't exist in the rulebook any more. The "symbol" numbers that some railroads use are a different matter, and no need for any such convention there. Santa Fe started a new numeric symbol system circa 1972 that included lots of westward-even and eastward-odd.

Even though they used numbers instead of letters I think train SYMBOL would be more appropriate then train NUMBER.

The first # was the origin, the second was the priority code, and the third was the destination code. Thus the odd/even number representing the direction did not apply with the SF symbols.

9 was the highest priority and was basicly a UPS train symbol. And even after they went from numeric to alpha code they still used the 991,199,891,198 codes at UPSs request.

As to origin / destination I don't know what the lower numbered locations were but 9 was the bay area, 8 was the LA area, 7 was Arizona & New Mexico, ect.