Pine Grove (Joseph V. McDonald) survived at least until 2003 in private ownership. Pine Beach (Beatrice McDonald) was likely scrapped.
[quote user="rcdrye"]
Amtrak named a couple of ex-UP 10-6 sleepers after Joseph MacDonald and his wife. They were used up to the end of Montrealer service in 1995.
[/quote] Not wxactly'new' but very interested and getting started following CLASSIC TRAINS....Was reading back some stuff on the Internet, tr: AMTRAK and some of the " New regeime's[make that CEO. Richard Armstrong's 'stiring the pot' and remaking our Nat'l Rail Service into a financial success(!) ]
I ain't holding my breath! While surfing around I found some interesting quotes, other things I had not known and having a general 'immersion' Found a piece in a Battle Creek, Mi. newspaper that was sort of interesting, and I dug it out because it shows a certain amount of claivoyance on the part of one individual[IMHO]; he happened to be a Consumer Advocate, nominated to the AMTRAK, after having languished while Pres. Nixon, was 'frying HIS other fish', before his last presiential junket back to California. Liked below[in part] @ https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/204266912/
FTA:"...WASHINGTON - An Amtrak director says he fears the national passenger train sys-' tem could go broke in the next two or three years simply trying to maintain the expenses of its Boston-to-Washing-tonruns. Joseph V. MacDonald, one of 13 Amtrak directors, said the serious problems will arise as a result of the ConRail plan for restructuring freight lines in the Northwest and Midwest. He pointed out that the U S. Railway Association, which created CVONRail, provides that freight systems shouldn't have to bear the tremendous cost of upgrading the rail lines on the Boston-to-Washington runcommonly called the Northeast Corridor. That leaves Am track to pick up the bill, McDonald said. He also questions the need to set up a parallel line along the corridor, to be used exclusively by freight trains. In a letter to the editor of the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, in which he laid out his misgivings, he said, "The cost of the upgrading of the parallel lines is to be borne by Amtrak. US-RA offered no estimate of the cost I suspected it should be in the billions."
Article FRM:"Battle Creek Enquirer from Battle Creek, Michigan · Page 22
True enough - We also saw occasional ex-NYC "Valley" and occasional ACL/SAL equipement. On the other hand I always rode coach on the Montrealer in 1978... One of the photos in the archives shows the baggage-dorm conversion of one of the 1953 ACF US Army hospital cars. The other conversion used on the Montrealer was the far more famous "Le Pub". Even after the HEP conversion, when a lot of weird and wonderful equipment was retired, the Montrealer was still a great way to get from the "Upper Valley" to New York, Washington or even Texas.
rcdrye wanswheel The Santa Fe cars were seldom if ever part of the Montrealer.
The Santa Fe cars were seldom if ever part of the Montrealer.
Well they definitely were at least once in October 1978.
wanswheelThanks Rob. They were Santa Fe though. Pine Grove and Pine Beach.
I went back and looked them up later. The Montrealer's regular 10-6 cars before then were UP "Pacific" series, with an occasional SP Sunset Limited car showing up, which is why I pegged them as ex-UP. The Santa Fe cars were seldom if ever part of the Montrealer. I rode both of the "Pine" cars in the 1970s on other trains. Except for the letterboard treatment and the pre-HEP A/C, all three series were nearly identical (UP and SP had Electromechanical, "Pine" cars originally had steam ejector).
Thanks Rob. They were Santa Fe though. Pine Grove and Pine Beach.
Yup. 1960 NY-LA-SF, westbound UP Challenger, eastbound California Zephyr.
Terrific read...thats your Dad, right?
Sure hope you were one of the 7 out of 10 that got to go on those Transcontinental trips!
Those prices don't reflect oil price shock except peripherally; you're seeing the consequence of Nixon abandoning Bretton Woods and letting the dollar float.
Thats quite the excerpt and very telling...first realization is the price of things before the oil crisis and second stunner is how far passenger service by 1970 had been abandoned and out of the minds of the public. 10% occupancy on the Broadway, the office gal refusing to book travel for the salesman and all by 1970 clearly demonstrates the success of the effort to rid us all of this relic from the past.
As Trains asked back then " Who shot the passenger train".
Since there's already a lot about my father on this thread, excerpt from 1970 AP article. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SCS19700623.1.17 The Broadway Limited: Old and worn but comfortable, it can take travelers out of New York in late afternoon and have them in Chicago early the next morning in time for a full day of business. The $90 fare, including pullman charges, is about the same as the cost of flying out that afternoon and getting a hotel room. Yet the Broadway on a recent trip had only 10 per cent occupancy, according to a steward. Porters were idling in empty sleepers. "These trains are the best kept secret in the world," said Joe MacDonald, one of the few passengers aboard. "There's just no effective merchandising." MacDonald, a buyer for Continental Can, travels 50,000 miles a year by rail. He has a standing bet with everyone in his New York office that he can spend less business time traveling by train than they can by flying. Nobody has collected yet, he says. But MacDonald says the girl in his New York office who makes 30,000 reservations a year for the company won't handle his itinerary. He says she tells him: "If you want to go by train, I don't have time to fool with it, please do it yourself."
Mike MacDonald
And how many 0-6-0's?
I'm pretty sure that Washington Terminal had three C-1 0-8-0's.
The article states that before AC catenary was extended from Trenton to Sunnyside, the swap between PRR DD! third-rail power and New Haven electrics took place at Penn Station, implying that the New Haven electrics had third rail shoes that could be used on overruning LIRR third rail as well as New York Central underrunning.
I had thought this to be the case, but was corrected that the swap took place, the engine change, at Harold Tower, and that the New Haven electrics did not enter Penn until they could use catenary.
Which or some of each?
My memory is firm that Washington Union Station's steam switcher locomotives were all 0-6-0 standard PRR B-6s with slope-back tenders, labeled for Washington Union Terminal. Massena wrote 0-8-0's. Were 0-8-0's used?
rcdrye- Now that is really terrific news. Good for Vermont.
Hope our Shiny Pony Prime Minister has not put a damper on the enthusiam after his latest absurd caper.
In a timely event Amtrak is supposed to have operated a St. Albans-Montreal test train today to verify the upgrades done by NECR since 2013. Equipment came up on yesterday's 56. Vermont is committed to extending the Vermonter at least to Montreal, if not resurrecting the Montrealer.
Thanks so much for all this. I remember that issue very well...must have read it ten times over the years. So good and rich with history.
"Bob LeMassena, 90, full-time volunteer of Colorado Railroad Museum, at the museum in Golden... Chinese have uncovered a 105 year old steam locomotive in a riverbed in China. They are asking the rail museum in the US to help them identify it. LeMassena came through for them." Denver Post, April 18, 2005
http://www.foothillsfuneral.com/obituary/2312572
https://books.google.com/books?id=pyn6-wNZFbwC&pg=PA91&dq=%22robert+le+massena%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqxPHApZPVAhVhxYMKHTdVC5wQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=%22robert%20le%20massena%22&f=false
September 15, 1974 Dear Mr. LeMassena: Through the kind courtesy of Dave Morgan, I have only this weekend received a copy of Trains Magazine for May 1972. I had asked Dave for the copy, because I had seen, in the listing of available back issues, mention of an article, "The Bootlegger," and I felt sure that it could only refer to our beloved Montrealer and Washingtonian. Sure enough. But more than just another article: it was an absolute pleasure to read your sensitive, accurate, and detailed story. I had been, when I had just seen the listing "The Bootlegger," mildly indignant at such a name -- knowing full well that there were those who did call the Washingtonian that -- but the first paragraph of your story took away the sting: "whose southbound run was dubbed accurately, if not politely, the Bootlegger." So long as you recognized the irreverent tone with which the name was applied down on the south end -- but never up on the CV!!!! But let's not get away from the subject. Probably the most important thing to me was that you wrote of the train as she was when I also was a boy in St. Albans, and my father was a fireman (hand firing those 600's all right!) on nos. 20 and 21, while his two brothers with more senority were engineers, some of the time on these two trains. I have placed the setting of your story as somewhere between 1928 and 1933 -- simply because the 600's came in April 1927, while the Pennsy was electrified to Washington by about 1933, I believe. Of course, your photograph of No. 21 with the 601 at East Swanton is dated July 1940, and the smoke deflectors and the higher coal bin on the tender were applied perhaps around that time. To put my time into perspective, I was born 10/13/14. In late 1926, I started substituting as a messenger in "SA" telegraph office in St. Albans, adjacent to the Despatcher's office, and I worked part time and full time there until late 1931.
So I was there, too, during the great days when The Montrealer and The Washingtonian were our best trains, and we spared nothing to make and keep them exactly that. It went into the permanent record of any man who delayed those trains even one minute. (Except of course that the CV couldn't do anything about The New Haven, who were the villains in the old CV saying, "The New Haven will lose 20 minutes into Springfield, the B&M will hold their own, and we have to make up the 20 minutes into Montreal." Which brings up one of the very few things I could find fault with in your story -- your comments about the slower run over the CV. Not so, not at all! While I can't produce timetables going that far back to prove it, it is my recollection that the New Haven and the B&M both had 40 MPH terminal to terminal schedules for the trains while we had 45 MPH on the CV. At one time the schedule White River Junction to St. Albans was down to 2 hours 28 minutes for the 117 miles, and there was a standing bulletin that nos. 20 and 21 were not to make up more than 20 minutes between White River Jct. and St. Albans. Of course, it was also the informal understanding that the engineer who couldn't make up 20 minutes wasn't qualified for the run! The only other thing I could find wrong was a slight misidentification of track. You are right that Windsor-White River Jct., 14 miles, was CV track; but also, the 11 miles between East Northfield, Mass. and Brattleboro, Vt., were paired track -- southward on the CV west of the Connecticut River, northward on the B&M across the river. But a little more significantly, north of St. Albans the CV track did not end at the Canadian border: St. Armand, Des Rivieres, Iberville, all were CV, all the way to St. Johns, which was total of 43 miles if my memory is right. At St. Johns northward, the CV joined the CN track running from Rouses Point and Cantic to St. Johns and Montreal. So the exchange of mileage on crews and engines was the 47 miles St. Johns to Montreal versus the 43 miles St. Albans to St. Johns. In post-WWII years, the CN upgraded the Rouses Point Branch of the CV between Fonda Jct. and East Alburgh, where the old Canada Atlantic line diverged to Boteau, and tied to the connection to the Rouses Point-St. Johns line at Cantic, to create a new main line between St. Albans and St. Johns. For a few years, service was maintained between St. Albans and St. Johns via the original main line through East Swanton-Highgate Springs-St. Armand, through a pair of locals pulled by the old 219 and 220, then finally the old line was abandoned save for a section up to East Swanton only. This changed the crew and engine mileage, of course, shortening the CV mileage to 25 miles St. Albans to Cantic. Initially, the CN tried to exercise their additional mileage; but the Brotherhoods went to Uncle Sam, who ruled that unless CN allowed the CV crews constructively their old 43 miles St. Albans-St. Johns, then Uncle Sam would require CN to take their engines and crew off at the border, thus requiring establishment of engine and crew terminals at Cantic, at prohibitive cost to CN. So CN yielded. Another idiosyncracy of Nos. 20 and 21 was that, by special agreements with the Brotherhooods, these two trains, and these two only, were exclusively CV jobs all the way White River Jct. to Montreal. This came about because of a contract Grand Trunk Railway had signed with Rutland RR in 1919, under which GTR agreed never to operate a through passenger service Montreal-New York City except via Rutland RR. In order to operate the Montrealer and Washingtonian without violating that contract, it was necessary that the CN avoid all participation in the operation of the train; so it was set up as a CV operation, running into Montreal under CV trackage rights, rather than as a CN operation St. Johns-Montreal. Reservations on the train were all handled by St. Albans, and when I was working as a messenger on the second trick, the hottest thing I had to handle was to run out to the ticket office with the "space message", which handed back to St. Albans all the space not checked in at the gate when the train left Montreal. The St. Albans ticket agent then did all the filling of requests for space down the line. The CV's only dining car was each morning put on the rear of No. 21 at St. Albans, to Montreal, and taken off each night. The subterfuge was carried to the point that 5 CN 4-6-2's, the 234-238 inclusive, moved down to the CV in 1924 to cover the runs, were repainted and renumbered 234-238. After the CV got the new 600's, 4-8-2's, the 234-238 were sent back to CN, but were again repainted in St. Albans in their real owners livery and numbers before they went back. Oh, we were mighty proud of our train. When the disastrous Flood (which all Vermonters know to be the big one of 1927) knocked out the CV between St. Albans and White River Jct., Nos 20 and 21 were run for an entire year over the D&H, who very kindly charged the CV $400 per day for the use of their track, meanwhile requiring CV to furnish engines and crews and fuel and pay for a D&H pilot, but refusing to let the trains handle a single passenger except Montreal-New York or beyond. Do you wonder at the strength of the feeling in Vermont in 1971-72, when we were waging the campaign to get Montreal service restored by Amtrak via the CV instead of the D&H? I am sure wars have been fought over lesser issues, than the determination of CV employees and the State of Vermont that this time we are going to get the trains back! (A Burlington Free Press signed editorial said, "What Vermonters must do is beat Governor Rockefeller to the punch"!!) But here I'm getting into another subject, which someday will be the subject of that book I've promised people to write -- as you may know, I was the originator of the proposal (literally a 29-page business Proposal dated July 26, 1971) to get the Montrealer and Washingtonian restored. It took 13 months out of my life, but we won. Which is the reason that in May 1972 I didn't get a copy of Trains Magazine -- I was just too inundated in fighting the campaign to take time to pick up the magazine! Now I have the May 1972 issue, and belatedly I've enjoyed more than I can say, your fine article, which in almost every paragraph took me back some 40 years in a heady return to those days when life was so much simpler for all of us -- or so it seems. In return, I had promised Dave Morgan to send him a copy of the original Proposal for the Montrealer's restoration, which I shall... Xerox at the office.... I'll run two copies...and send you one too; had Amtrak known as much as you do of the importance of the old Montrealer, it wouldn't have taken us 13 months to teach them. (Their position was, no train has run for 5 years, therefore no train should ever run there.)
Of course, now that the train is back, it is most gratifying to find it is the absolutely best performing train financially on the entire Amtrak System. I hoped I haven't bored you with these extended comments, but I put a lot of my life and soul into that train, both when I was a boy and in 1971-72. I don't think there could possibly be anyone who appreciated your article more than I. Sincerely, Joseph V. MacDonald
https://archive.org/stream/Classic_Trains_Special_Edition_No.19_Great_Trains_East#page/n85/mode/2up
Thanks. An 8600 on the Montrealer was unusual. Most of the time it was one of the American Flyer former grill cars that were rebuilt with 8600 series interiors.
I've seen quite a few pictures of the New Haven's sleepers in the McGinnis era, and in all of them the 6-4-6 Beach Series and 6DB-Lounge State-series cars have an orange window stripe, while the 14-4 Point-series cars are all stainless steel with no striping. Not sure what the reason was for the difference.
The B&M cars named Dartmouth College I & II for the WRJ set out sleeper were originally part of the B&M's group of four "Beach" series cars. LA-based PV "Salisbury Beach" is the only one still in operation. These cars became available in the early '60's after the State of Maine and Gull were discontinued. They were sold to CN in 1965.
Kevin Holland's excellent book "Passenger Trains of Northern New England in the Streamlined Era" has a color photo of the Montrealer crossing on a trestle near Swanton, VT. in 1966. The consist is two CV GP-9s, a CN RPO, Southern heavyweight baggage car, New Haven 8600-series coach, CN coach, NH sleeper-lounge, NH 14-4 sleeper and one of CN's ex B&M or BAR streamlined 6-4-6 sleepers.
Dave
Those were the cars that I rode most frequently on the Owl and on the Federal. I think they all got the orange stripe during the McGinnis era. I wonder if any have survived? Or any of the post-WWII NH sleepers?
At times the buffet lounge on both the Federal and the Montrealer was a PRR car. More often on the Federal. The Owl did not carry one except when it was combined with the State of Maine in Providence, during the last years of the State of Maine. The Owl was, however, all Pullman until the Narraganset was dropped and its coaches added to the Owl, with added stops/
Both the Owl and the Federal had a drop-pickup Providence sleeper. The Owl's was discontinued before the Federal's.
Dave, here are the names of the 14-4's.
Allyns Point, Beaver Tail Point, Black Point, City Point, Cornfield Point, East Point, Goshen Point, Gull Point, India Point, Long Point, Lookout Point, Lords Point, Manomet Point, Mishaum Point, Monomoy Point, Morgan Point, Napatree Point, North Point, Pond Point, Quonset Point [not Hut], Race Point, Rocky Point, Roton Point, Sandy Point, Shippan Point, Stratford Point, Wilson Point.
The first one was numbered 500; the last one was 526.
Johnny
Correct, both the B&M and NH had "6-4-6" Pullmans.
The NH also had 6 double bedroom, buffet lounges and
14 roomette, 4 double bedroom cars.
It was the 14 and 4 series that I mistakenly remembered as 10 and 6. Except for my trips on Dartmouth College I and II. Do you have the names of the 14 and 4's? Om 1960, Russ Jackson and I rode the Maurey Kleibolt - Chicago RR Club 5632 Colorado excursion from Chicago, including a side trip behind UP 844 out of Denver to Rawlins and back (diesel Denver- Cheyenne), and four days on the D&RGW narrow gauge. Russ and I were assigned to roomettes in one of the New Haven 4 and 14;s, and Maurey said: "We wanted you to feel at home." McGinnis orange stripe and all. The CB&Q had mechanically gone over the whole consist, including some heavyweight equipment, so we had a good trip.
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