59. Railroad employees, 1950 / 2004October 2006, pages 50 and 51
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60. C&NW, 1968 / 2006November 2006, pages 46 and 47
61. SP's Donner Pass snowshedsDecember 2006, pages 66 and 67
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62. Mainline tonnage, 1980 / 2005February 2007, pages 52 and 53http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/01/Mainline%20tonnage%201980-2005.aspx
63. The road of the Century in 2007March 2007, pages 42, 43 and 44
64. West Coast passenger trainsApril 2007, pages 58 and 59
65. Looping through the Front RangeMay 2007, pages 56 and 57http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Colorados%20Georgetown%20Loop.aspx
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66. Canadian Pacific in 1974June 2007, pages 42 and 43
67. Follow that car!July 2007, pages 50, 51 and 52
68. Milwaukee Road, 1969 and 2007August 2007, pages 52 and 53
69. Tennessee's railroads, 1949 / 2007September 2007, pages 42, 43 and 44
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70. Illinois Central's rootsOctober 2007, pages 54 and 55
71. Burlington freight, 1947November 2007, pages 42 and 43http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Burlington%20Route%20freight%20trains%201947.aspx
72. BNSF snowsheds on Marias PassDecember 2007, pages 56 and 57
73. Transcontinental tonnageJanuary 2008, pages 44 and 45
74. Natural resources in KCS countryFebruary 2008, pages 58 and 59http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Natural%20resources%20in%20Kansas%20City%20Southerns%20territory.aspx
75. Amtrak ridership by stationMarch 2008, pages 32, 33 and 34http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Amtrak%20station%20volumes%20in%202007.aspx
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76. Scranton's tangled steel webApril 2008, pages 32 and 33http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/01/Scrantons%20tangled%20steel%20web.aspx
77. Mainline railroads in 2035May 2008, pages 48 and 49http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Railroad%20bottlenecks%20in%202035.aspx
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78. Railroads in metal competitionJune 2008, pages 50 and 51
40. Mainline tonnageMarch 2005, pages 76 and 77
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Mainline%20tonnage%20of%20the%20early%201970s.aspx
The text appearing on these pages is as follows-
Trains MagazineIn the early 1970s, economic growth was transforming the South and West, and Western railroads surpassed Eastern roads in ton-miles carried for the first time in 1971. Traffic declines in the East heped trigger a rash of bankruptcies, which spurred Congress to commission detailed studies of railroad lines and operations. The results warned that, absent fundamental policy changes, the crisis would not be confined there.Shown here are the traffic densities on the busiest U.S. main lines in the early '70s. The lightest routes depicted are those carrying 10 million gross tons per year. (Gross tonnage includes the weight of locomotives, cabooses, loaded commodities, and empty cars.) One federal study published in the '70s noted that routes below a threshold of 20 MGT had significantly higher maintenance and operating costs per ton-mile, and that there were far more miles of track below 20 MGT than above it. In the early part of the decade — when the U.S. rail network totaled 206,400 miles — 33% of the mileage carried a mere 1% of the traffic, while 67% of the traffic funneled on just 20% of the route-miles.Light-density lines in the East were often commuter routes, or led to forsaken mill towns and anthracite coalfields; in the Midwest, they were grain-gathering spurs. Everywhere, they were a drain on resources. So, too, were main lines that, on the map, disappear as traffic thins out. Note the "gap" in Rock Island's Golden State Route in Kansas, or the abrupt end of lines such as Santa Fe's passenger route in Kansas, Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension in South Dakota, and the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania.Recognizing the dire situation, the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1972 streamlined its procedure for railroad abandonment — over the objection of several states. By the early 1980s, a number of lightly used main lines would be abandoned, downgraded, or sold. Other light-density routes, such as the BN across western Nebraska, would see their fortunes revive in the '80s and '90s, thanks to deregulation, mergers, and the growth of intermodal traffic and Powder River Basin coal.
41. Kansas City tonnage, 1971 / 2003April 2005, pages 54 and 55
Trains MagazineChicago might have more trains - and St. Louis a big shiny arch - but Kansas City is the ton-mile king, with over 1 billion tons passing through the city (or above it, on flyovers) in 2003. That's 15% more tons than Chicago. What is remarkable about K.C. is its sheer growth, from 378 million gross tons in 1971, to 1.1 billion in 2003. Mergers mave have reduced the number of Class 1s serving Kansas City, but not the routes into town. Of the 24 main lines to K.C. in 1971, the four that are gone were never more than minor players. Instead, mergers made modest routes more important. Union Pacific brings Powder River Basin coal in on the Kansas Subdivision (better known as the Marysville Cut-off), while the empties file back on the Falls City Sub. South of town, UP splits traffic between parallel MP and MKT routes to Wagoner, Okla. Wyoming coal is the big engine of tonnage growth, entering the city on BNSF's St. Joseph Sub and UP's Kansas Sub, then segregating onto three UP lines, one BNSF line, and the Kansas City Southern. Intermodal dominates BNSF's Transcon, while Norfolk Southern is a conduit for westbound autos and auto parts.
42. Makeup of the MoPacMay 2005, pages 54 and 55
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/04/What%20happened%20to%20the%20Missouri%20Pacific%20Texas%20and%20Pacific%20and%20Chicago%20and%20Eastern%20Illinois.aspx
Trains MagazineBefore the mega-merger movement of the 1980s, only a few U.S. Class I systems attained route-mileage in five figures. Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Milwaukee Road did so by spanning the transcontinental West, Pennsylvania and New York Central bulked up in the East, and Chicago & North Western and Burlington Route (if you include its Colorado and TExas subsidiaries) did so in granger country. Union Pacific didn't quite make it, and Southern Railway barely did. Then Chessie System and Family Lines got there in the 1970s beginnings of today's huge systems.MIssouri Pacific is a genuine five-figure system that might not immediately come to mind. In 1970, when "MoPac" issued a roadmap-size" system folder on which this map is based, MoPac proper plus subsidiaries Texas & Pacific, Chicago & Eastern Illinois, and Missouri-Illinois comprised a system of about 11,2004 route-miles.This map shows the MoPac of 1970 and the status of all those lines today. By glancing at the thicker, solid-color lines, one can see that most of the system's main lines, except for the one to Colorado, survive as parts of Union Pacific, which absorbed MP in 1982 and formally merged it out of existence in 1997.The area of origin for Missouri Pacific, the Show-Me State, has main lines that these days move a lot of Powder River Basin coal, plus intermodal traffic. For today's Union Pacific, though, the "heart" of the old MoPac is truly Houston, where the hottest commodities are those in the lucrative "chemical coast" traffic. To understand fully how MP fits into UP today, one must mentally add the Katy, Cotton Belt, and Southern Pacific lines that UP absorbed.St. Louis, where MoPac started, remained its headquarters city. The Pacific Railroad was chartered in 1851, opened the next year, and renamed Missouri Pacific in 1870. The system's major components included St. Louis & Iron Mountain, from St. Louis south, chartered in 1851; International & Great Northern, in Texas (1873); and Gulf Coast Lines, a 1913 merger creation of a collection of roads between New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas.Texas & Pacific, chartered in 1871 to build west from Marshall, Texas, was essentially taken over in the 1920s by MP, which by 1930 owned all T&P preferred stock and a majority of its common stock. MP fully merged T&P in 1976, by which time T&P had acquired the three "Muskogee Roads" centered around that Oklahoma town (Kansas, Oklahoma & Gulf; Midland Valley; Oklahoma city-Ada-Atoka).MoPac bought into 113-year-old Chicago & Eastern Illinois in 1961; took control in 1967; sold (by ICC fiat) C&EI's Evansville (Ind.) line to Louisville & Nashville in 1969; and merged C&EI in 1976. Missouri-Illinois, popularly the "Mike & Ike," was a 172-mile pike acquired by MoPac in 1933. It operated in both states but crossed the Mississippi River on a ferry (until 1961), never a bridge.
43. Boston and Maine facilities, 1937June 2005, pages 36 and 37
Trains MagazineThis is a portrait of a railroad in a hurry: the Boston & Maine in 1937, when 300 passenger trains a day flooded Boston's North Station and 60,000 gross tons of freight coursed daily through the Berkshire Hills - a tonnage level exceeding that of B&M's fierce rival, the Boston & Albany. In the late 19th century, Boston & Maine amassed an empire that blanketed northern New England from the Atlantic coast to the Connecticut River, with the Boston & Albany functioning as an impenetrable iron curtain to the south. Boston & Maine spent the early part of the 20th century upgrading its rolling stock and physical plant to handle traffic across its vast system. Between 1927 and 1932, the railroad poured $49 million into roadway and structure improvements, such as new yards, faster track, stronger bridges, and Centralized Traffic Control. Faster and heavier locomotives followed in the 1920s and '30s. Speed and efficiency were the B&M's chosen weapons in the battle to hold onto business in the wake of new highways and a declining industrial base. Freight and passenger volumes bottomed out in 1932-33, then rose slightly through the end of the decade. With its lock on southbound traffic out of Maine, an extensive freight-gathering network around Boston, and a relatively gentle mountain crossing (with 4.75-mile Hoosac Tunnel as the centerpiece), B&M was the favored route between northern New England and the west. The downside was B&M had a system map that resembled something a child might have furiously scribbled with a crayon on a sheet of paper. And the tangle of branch lines radiating from Boston had a swarm of commuter trains, whose patronage was dropping as quickly as Massachusetts could lay down asphalt. Speed on the B&M, as elsewhere, was the chemical reaction produced by combining three basic elements: track, signaling, and equipment servicing facilities. In order for the reaction to work, there had to be sufficient quantities of each. Multiple track, which covered 30% of B&M's 1,961 route miles in 1937, was reserved for the busiest freight and passenger lines, roughly forming an "X" that crossed at Ayer, Mass. Boston and Portland, Maine, were the eastern terminals; to the west were Worcester, Mass. (where New York City traffic was handed to the New Haven), and the Mechanicville, N.Y., gateway, site of B&M's largest hump yard. Main and secondary lines were protected with block signals and CTC; light-density branches were under train-order control. Although the diesel-powered Flying Yankee entered service in 1935 between Boston and Bangor, steam comprised the majority of B&M's 606 locomotives in 1937, requiring a vast number of coal and water stations, plus turning facilities for commuter trains and branch-line freights. On the 268-mile route between Portland and Mechanicville, coaling towers were spaced every 30-60 miles - closer, if major freight or commuter yards were encountered - and water tanks every 10-25 miles. B&M's coal bill in 1937 was $1.6 million, nearly 20% of the road's total purchases that year. Ultimately, dieselization would reduce the need for turntables, boost top passenger-train speeds from 70 to 75 mph, and eliminate the coal and water stops. But in 1937, the Boston & Maine is the picture of steam railroading at its zenith.
44. Northeast commuter trainsJuly 2005, pages 62 and 63
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/04/Northeast%20commuter%20trains%20per%20day%202005.aspx
Trains MagazineThink you're in a hurry to get to work? The 3,170 trains on this map make it their business to hustle, with a purposefulness matched only by the riders packed aboard their coaches.This is a snapshot of the commuter trains that run every weekday in the Northeast. Without them, some of the biggest cities in the U.S. would grind to a halt. The tabulations come from public timetables in effect during March 2005. Only revenue moves are shown, meaning that some lines see even more trains, like non-scheduled "flip back" moves to reposition equipment for the next rush.With apologies to Union Pacific's triple-track in Nebraska and BNSF's Transcon, putting 100 trains a day on a main line is child's play in the East! Granted, commuter trains all behave identically, and pretty much look the same. They need to, if they're to race against time twice a day. But the sheer numbers are staggering. SEPTA squeezes all 458 of its weekday trains through a four-track tunnel between Philadelphia's Suburban and 30th Street stations; MBTA uses two Boston stations t handle its 465 trains; Metro-North keeps Grand Central Terminal humming with 529 trains a day. and runs 98 more on its outer branches and west of the Hudson River.Perhaps the biggest surprise? New Jersey Transit has surpassed the Long Island Rail Road in weekday train volumes. Getting the most out of big-ticket projects like the Secaucus Junction transfer station and Montclair Line electrification, NJ Transit now fields 751 weekday trains — 20 more than LIRR (known since forever as the nation's busiest railroad). That NJT figure is a little disingenuous, though, since it includes 84 trips made by a one-car "dinky" on the 3-mile Princeton branch. Take out those runs, and the Long Island Railroad is comfortably back on top.Some of the busiest lines are tenants on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (except New Rochelle-New Haven, where Amtrak is the tenant). In the 458 miles between Boston and Washington, only three segments lack commuter trains: Providence, R.I.-New York Penn Station (19 miles), and Newark, Del.-Perryville, MD. (20 miles). Conversely, some Amtrak trains function as commuter services, notably the 20 weekday Keystone Service trains between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa., and six New York-Philadelphia Clockers.The Northeast's commuter lines are an industry success story. Twenty years ago, Virginia Railway Express and Shore Line East did not even exist, and NJ Transit was running less than half the 287 tains it puts today through the 95-year-old Hudson River tunnels. As suburbs have pushed farther out, commuter agencies have added routes and services to keep pace with their customer base. MARC entered Frederick, Md., in 2001; Metro-North extended its Harlem Line to Wassaic in 2000; and the MBTA added 93 miles in the mid-1990s, reaching Worcester and Newburyport, and opening its Old Colony lines to Plymouth, Kingston, and Middleboro/Lakeville (which hadn't seen a train since 1959).Commuter services require an intense capital investment: equipment to handle crowds; track and signaling t move trains safely on mercilessly tight headways; big-city terminals an and suburban park-and-rides; and enough employees to keep the system running like a well-oiled machine. Public commuter agencies can see beyond the trains' red ink — to the financial benefits that accrue from having a healthy business district, flourishing residential areas, and convenient tourist access.There are 8 million stories in the naked city, after all, and some begin with a train ride.
45. L&N, coal mines in 1966August 2005, pages 60 and 61
Trains MagazineTransition was under way for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad's coal-hauling operations during the 1960s. The railroad's traditional coal-loading points reflected the single car movements, but the decade also marked the development of the unit train, with coal loaded at high speed "flood" loaders in a single train for a single consignee. Pioneering this trend were unit train operations such as the Paradise, Ky., to Widow's Creek, Ala., movement of Tenneesse Valley Authority steam coal and the 1964 launch of the Lynch, Ky., to Gary, Ind., "Steel Train," hauling metallurgical coal for U.S. Steel. Traditionally, L&N's coal territories included the bituminous fields in eastern Kentucky, and a small portion of southwestern Virginia. Another major coal generating region was in western Kentucky around Madisonville. The Birmingham area also produced quite a bit of tonnage for steel-making purposes in that region. Inherited in the 1957 merger with the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis were some modest operations in southern Tennessee. As the decade ended, the L&N was poised to enter its heaviest period of coal traffic, with even greater growth and change in markets and volume. The multiple single-car loading points of the old days, reflected in these maps, would continue to give way to more flood-load unit train facilities.
46. Intermodal trains per day, 1984September 2005, pages 40 and 41
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/04/Intermodal%20trains%20per%20day%20in%201984.aspx
Trains MagazineIntermodal haulage on railroads initially resembled loose-car railroading: Cities of varying sizes had ramps that originated a few flatcars, which were added to merchandise freights. A trucker, though, could beat that service easily. Larger cities generated solid intermodal trains, but the cost of terminals, equipment, and operations made the business lucrative only in lanes of 500 miles or more — a narrow and competitive market segment. Deregulation came to intermodal traffic in 1981, and by first-quarter 1984 — when I surveyed Class I railroads to compile this map of dedicated intermodal trains — some gradual changes could be seen:Fewer terminals: To maximize revenues, railroads abandoned loose-car intermodal in favor of dedicated trains linking a handful of high-volume terminals. In 1973, the Class Is showed over 1,000 intermodal ramp locations in the Official Guide; by 1983, the number had dropped to 500 or so (today it's about 200). In longer lanes, trains set out and picked up cars at intermediate points, which (as of 1984) are labeled on this map. Mixed trains: Burlington Northern, Conrail, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific added auto racks or auto-parts cars to some dedicated intermodal trains. Other roads, including SP, Conrail, and Norfolk Southern, still ran mixed intermodal-carload freights, which are not on this map.Short-haul's last gasp: In the late 1970s and early '80s, some experimental trailer trains were launched in lanes of 400 miles or less. Many succumbed to low margins, high costs, and lukewarm demand, including Illinois Central Gulf's Chicago-St. Louis trains (dropped in 1985) and Grand Trunk Western's Chicago-Detroit service (gone by 1986). Florida East Coast's 350-mile speedway thrived, thanks in part to its participation in connections' longer lanes, but cost was still a factor.Varied frequencies: Since not all trains ran every day, numbers on the map show the heaviest days of operation. On SP, UP, C&NW, and Conrail, the numbers were averaged to account for weekday-only piggyback trains and once-a-week stack trains.Double-stack's infancy: The shift to double-stacks had just begun, with traffic for American President Lines and Sea-Land moving in once- or twice-weekly trains between West Coast ports, Chicago, and New Jersey. Clearance projects and truck-rail partnerships would later cement the stack train's efficiency.
47. Rock Island Lines, 1964October 2005, pages 46 and 47
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/01/Rock%20Island%20Lines%201964.aspx
Trains MagazineRock Island Lines serve 14 Western states," the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific's map in the Official Guides of 1964 proudly proclaimed, offering "7,849 miles of modern railroad." Trouble was, Rock Island's main lines went everywhere its parallel rivals did, but usually on a longer route and/or one that involved trackage rights in a key big-city terminal. RI's branch lines already had long felt the pinch of covering too many miles and carrying too little traffic, and most of them probably were no longer "modern."Fact was, 1964, the year of the RI chief engineer's system map below, was Rock Island's last year of profitability. Merger "saviors" were about to come calling, first Chicago & North Western and later Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. The stodgy Interstate Commerce Commission would muddle along for a decade before it finally approved a UP-SP split of the RI, but by then the Rock Island was in such bad shape that no one wanted it. The decline of its physical plant seemingly was irreversible.For the moment, though, let's ignore all that, as well as the fact that the Chicago-headquartered Rock Island had only 16 more years to live. In 1964, the big granger was still trying mightily to hang on to past glory, fielding passenger trains such as the "extra fare" Golden State to Los Angeles with partner SP, the Sam Houston Zephyr on the half-owned Burlington-Rock Island Railroad linking Dallas and Houston, plus six Rockets (Rocky Mountain, Des Moines, Corn Belt, Twin Star, and two Peorias) and a handful of nameless secondary trains. Not to mention a decent-sized Chicago commuter service out to Joliet, Ill., on two lines as far as Blue Island.But back to the bread and butter: freight. A glance at this map reveals the important lines — those colored other than blue — were the double-track segments across Illinois and in Kansas; the CTC-signaled Golden State path to Kansas City, north-south spine into central Oklahoma, Twin Cities route, and some of the Omaha line; and the several routes protected by automatic block signals. One problem: The importance of any given line doesn't always equate with the amount of freight traffic, as revealed by correlating the map with the density chart in the corner. Nevertheless, almost half of RI's route-mileage is in those three "top-drawer" track categories.That about three-fourths of the Rock Island's route-mileage when it shut down in 1980 is still in use in 2005 testifies to the factor of economics ultimately trumping the politics involved in the largest railroad closure in U.S. history.
48. Wisconsin's railroads, 1940 / 2005November 2005, pages 58 and 59
http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20Reference/Railroad%20Maps/2010/03/Wisconsins%20railroads%20in%201940%20and%202005.aspx
Trains MagazineWhen Al Kalmbach published the first issue of Trains in November 1940, the company's home state of Wisconsin boasted 6,675 route-miles of railroad, a total that had peaked at 7,500 two decades earlier and was declining. Lingering effects from the Great Depression kept the state's three largest railroads in bankruptcy — Chicago & North Western, Milwaukee Road, and Soo Line were all operating under court-appointed trustees in 1940.North Western was the state's dominant railroad. With affiliate Omaha Road, C&NW served every corner of Wisconsin, often with duplicate routes. Competition came from the Milwaukee, which blanketed the southern half of the state, and Soo Line in the north. Despite extensive branches, all three roads carried their heaviest traffic between Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul on routes that are maintained to this day. The branches and low-density through routes have mostly disappeared.Milwaukee Road's 1977 bankruptcy triggered some surprising shifts in rail ownership. Soo Line acquired the Milwaukee in 1985, then spun off its historic Wisconsin trackage to the newly formed Wisconsin Central in 1987. Canadian National purchased WC in 2001 and now can claim just under 50 percent of all rail mileage in the state, while the former Milwaukee Road main line linking Chicago and St. Paul has become a key link in Canadian Pacific's network. Chicago & North Western had a decades-long practice of abandoning or spinning off Wisconsin lines; C&NW had more than 2,500 miles in 1940, while successor Union Pacific in 2005 operates just 650 Wisconsin miles, one-quarter on trackage rights. Meanwhile, the Burlington's line along the Mississippi River, a passenger-heavy route in 1940, today under BNSF is the state's most heavily used main line, and is all-freight.More than 95 percent of Wisconsin's rail mileage had passenger service in 1940, with just under 1,000 stops and frequencies ranging from two trains a day in rural areas to 50 a day in Milwaukee, the largest city. Wisconsin now has nine stations, eight served by Amtrak (the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha corridor and the Empire Builder), plus Kenosha, the end of Metra's UP North commuter line from Chicago.
Could the South Pennsylvania Railroad maps that I have on my Forum be included here?n This is the never completed route along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If you travel the turnpike this might be of some interest.
southpennrailroad.com
http://southpennraiload.freeforums.org/test-forum-1-f2.html
Tracking the William Henry Vanderbilt South Pennsylvania Railroad right of way along the Historic Pennsylvania Turnpike.
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