From the Steam Passenger Service Directory to the Tourist Trains Guidebook

I’ve been moonlighting lately on behalf of the good folks down the hall in our books department who are updating the Tourist Trains Guidebook. The sixth edition will be published in 2017. I’ve got a few entries to update, and the work is giving me the chance to touch base with some folks I haven’t talked to recently. It’s also giving me the opportunity to find out the latest advances and challenges at museums and tourist lines that I haven’t visited lately. And it also instills in me a bit of amazement to be working on a book that I found about 1973, a publication that helped me realize what else is out there in the way of preservation railroading. Yes, long before the internet made it easy to check operating schedules and learn about railroads just down the road from one another, this guidebook was the equivalent of the Sears Christmas Wish Book to those of us of a certain age. It still serves that role today.

 Back then, the guidebook had a different name, a real mounthful: The Steam Passenger Service Directory. It was the product of the Empire State Railway Museum in New York, and it was meant to steer steam-starved fans to those early tourist lines and museums that were literally keeping the fires burning. The first edition was published 50 years ago in 1966, and it contained 62 entries. If you want to get a sense of how railway preservation has grown and flourished over the last half century, consider this: Today’s guidebook has more than 520 entries; the criteria has changed – today, it’s not just steam train rides. It’s also preservation railways, dinner trains, trolley lines, and depot museums.

 The world of railway preservation 50 years ago was much different, as the first edition, black-and-white guide shows. Imagine this, my friends who love railroad history: 1966 was a world without the California State Railroad Museum. The Cumbres & Toltec had not been launched. The Georgetown Loop was still a gleam in the eyes of many. Steamtown was still private and in Vermont. East Broad Top still ran. Union Pacific was content to let No. 844 out on a fan trip or two each year. Norfolk Southern predecessor Southern Railway was just about to get into the steam excursion business. No National Park Service site at the place where the first transcontinental railroad was completed. Yes, it was a different world.

If you can get your hands on the first edition Steam Passenger Service Directory, you’ll find that it was as homespun and conversational as any fan publication could be at the time. It acknowledged the presence of five other tourist and museum operations, including Disneyland, Nevada Northern, and what today is the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, but said that efforts to reach them and gather accurate information were unsuccessful.

To my amazement, I counted 30 operations listed in the first edition that are still alive and kicking. They’re listed below. Some have gone through some amazing metamorphoses, everything from new names, ownership, and locations to even re-gauging one railroad (Black Hills Central was 3-foot gauge in addition to standard).

For years, my good friend, Dick Gruber, and I had a competition to see which one of us had visited more entries in the guidebook than the other. It's always fun to page through this book and use it to dream, plan, and go. Does anyone else check off their museum and tourist railroad visits using the Tourist Trains Guidebook? 

1. Roaring Camp & Big Trees

2. California Western — Skunk

3. Orange Empire

4. Durango & Silverton (then Rio Grande)

5. Colorado Railroad Museum

6. Southeastern Railway Museum

7. Stone Mountain

8. Midwest Threshers in Mount Pleasant, Iowa

9. Seashore Trolley Museum

10. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum

11. Museum of Transport, St. Louis

12. Mount Washington Cog

13. White Mountain Central

14. Pine Creek (now N.J. Museum of Transportation)

15. Arcade & Attica

16. Tweetsie

17. Cedar Point

18. Ohio Railway Museum

19. Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine

20. Everett

21. Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern

22. Black Hills Central

23. Dollywood (then Goldrush Junction)

24. Texas Transportation Museum

25. Steamtown

26. Cass

27. National Railroad Museum, Green Bay

28. Laona & Northern

29. Mid-Continent (then Rattlesnake & Northern)

30. Union Pacific