Transcontinental passenger service - Chicago or St. Louis? A historical question

[Deggesty]

Flintlock76

Here's a short film from the 50's showing that "two-ticket" procedure Johnny described.  About five minutes (or so) in.

A pretty good demonstration of "what was" at any rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRVEOZphmDQ    

 

Right interesting, Wayne.

Amtrak will not allow such a trip for an unaccompanied minor under 16 years of age, for such overnight trips are forbidden. The boy was put on the train amd eceived by an adult.

The film calls the fireman "the engineer's helper."

[Flintlock76]

Here's a short film from the 50's showing that "two-ticket" procedure Johnny described.  About five minutes (or so) in.

A pretty good demonstration of "what was" at any rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRVEOZphmDQ    

[Deggesty]

When you traveled Pullman, you bought two tickets--one for transportation, and one for space. If there were more than one Pullman car in a train, there was a Pullman conductor,  and he and the railroad conductor came through the Pullmans together; you handed your tramsportation ticket to the railroad conductor, and you handed your space ticket to the Pullman conductor. I f there were only one Pullman in the consist, it had a porter in charge, who was respondsble diresctly to the Pullman company.

On my last trip by Pullman (in December of 1968), from Washington to Birmingham via Richmond, my mother and I shared a bedroom. When the RF&P conductor and Pullman conductor came to our room, I said, "Here's our space" as I handed the Pullman ticket to the Pullman conductor, and, as I handed my rail ticket to t=conductor, saying, "Here's my transportation, and my mpther has her transportation (which was a pass; my father worked for the ACL for many years).

What moneys exchanged hands betwen Pullman and the railroads, I have no idea.

After 12/31/1968, the railroads were responsible for the operation of the sleeping cars, most of tthose space tickets that I used were on flimsey white paper

[BaltACD]

Convicted One

 

Deggesty

Originally, they were one company--but were separated about 1948, the railroads took possession of the cars, and leased them to the Pullman Company, who staffed them 

Hopefully I'm not goiong into too fine of detail with the following questions,  but how was the passenger dollar split here?

I envision the railroad selling a trip up front.... Lets say Santa Fe  sells a trip from Los Angeles to New York City....sleeper all the way.... exchanges in Chicago with New York Central.

So they pay Pullman for "services in route" out of the fare collected, they also pay New York Central to forward the car to New York City, or does New York Central get a percentage of the fare?

And, on top of all that, Pullman pays Santa Fe to lease the car they are operating in? Is that lease short term (by the trip) or more along the lines of a sale/leaseback where the cars are leased long term regardless if they move or not?

Then of course, there are car repair costs to have to be delt with

  Seems like a lot of the fare is getting shuffled back and forth.

Presuming that a through rate was established - it would get split between the carriers based on the mileage each carrier represents of the entire route.

Car owners get hit with the costs of maintenance in accordance with AAR car repair rules.

The Pullman fare, goes entirely to Pullman.  I don't know the exact arrangements for the fare between Pullman and the carriers involved.  

Pullman and its operations is a full length novel all by itself.

[Convicted One]

Deggesty

Originally, they were one company--but were separated about 1948, the railroads took possession of the cars, and leased them to the Pullman Company, who staffed them

Hopefully I'm not going into too fine of detail with the following questions,  but how was the passenger dollar split here?

I envision the railroad selling a trip up front.... Lets say Santa Fe  sells a trip from Los Angeles to New York City....sleeper all the way.... exchanges in Chicago with New York Central.

So they pay Pullman for "services in route" out of the fare collected, they also pay New York Central to forward the car to New York City, or does New York Central get a percentage of the fare?

And, on top of all that, Pullman pays Santa Fe to lease the car they are operating in? Is that lease short term (by the trip) or more along the lines of a sale/leaseback where the cars are leased long term regardless if they move or not?

Then of course, there are car repair costs to have to be delt with

  Seems like a lot of the fare is getting shuffled back and forth.

 

 

[Muralist0221]

As an aside footnote, Trains Magazine offers a video of Alistaire Cooke's 50's TV Show Omnibus which highlights the operation of the 20th Century Limited and Grand Central Station. You can plainly see a Santa Fe lightweight stainless steel car in the consist of the Century as the camera goes by.

[charlie hebdo]

 

I think there was a C&NW sleeper that was seasonally loaned and repainted for use on IC trains to Florida.

Slight correction.  The C&NW leased two Imperial series 4-4-2 cars (Imperial Mark and Imperial Leaf) to the IC for winter trains starting in the 1960s. They remained in IC brown and orange year-round with Pullman on the letterboard and  a C&NW on each end through scrapping. I used to see them sitting in the dead yard on my commute. 

[Deggesty]

In 1953, the Los Angeles Limited still had a Minneapolis-Los Angeles car--C&NW Minneapolis-Omaha, and, of course, UP Omaha-Los Angeles.

[charlie hebdo]

Overmod

 

 

charlie hebdo

I think there was a C&NW sleeper that was seasonally loaned and repainted for use on IC trains to Florida.

 

 

If I'm not mistaken, we had a fairly recent thread on this general subject that involved 'seasonal' repainting of some IC cars for Florida service.

Which were the Chicago-to-Florida trains that had distinctive liveries?

 

On the IC,  you had the City of Miami and the Seminole.  The other routes (PRR,  C&EI, NYC) tended to have a potpourri of liveries as I recall from readings. 

On your other post,  what if's are fine when based on some realistic scenarios, as the Rea plan was.  But missing Pittsburgh would seem to eliminate a decent-sized population center en route. At least North Philly was in Philadelphia with easy connections back then to center city and elsewhere.  Now...?   Probably not. 

[wjstix]

Convicted One

A question that occurs to me, if PRR sends 7 sleepers to the west coast one day, and 7 more the next, it's going to be several days before they get that equipment back, (poor utilization) and what efforts are made to prevent an empty back haul? Does PRR need to hire a passenger marketing staff for each west coast terminal to market return trips? 

Or was there a TTX-like  car pool that all the participants shared?

 

 

It's kinda hard now to grasp how Pullman operated say 100 years ago. A Pullman car could go just about anywhere, and were so common that in the heavyweight era railroads painted their equipment Pullman green to match the Pullman cars in their trains. In 1910 you could get on a Pullman sleeper in Minneapolis and get off it in Los Angeles. Your car travelled over several railroads to get there, but you stayed with the car. There were many examples of things like that all across the country.

[Deggesty]

As to the Chicago-Florida streamliners, the South Wind was a PRR train, and the Dixie Flagler was an FEC train. Over the years, these two had equipment from other roads, and the livery may have been mixed. I never saw the Dixie Flagler or its successor (I did see its observatio--a stainless steel car--as it backed into Chattanooga one morning in 1956. 

The only time I rode Pullman (1966) on the Seminole, I rode in an UP 6-6-4 (American Sailor) with upper berth windows, from North Cairo to Birmingham. I did not notice if it was repainted for IC service. I think the IC was using its 6-6-4 cars to carry troops down to Jackson, Mississippi on the Panama Limited. on there way to camp by way of Shreveport (they rode coach west of Jackson).

[Deggesty]

Convicted One

Thanks for that.  I guess that I really never knew enough to appreciate that Pullman Company, Pullman Inc., and Pullman Standard were distinct entities.

 

Originally, they were one company--but were separated about 1948, the railroads took possession of the cars, and leased them to the Pullman Company, who staffed them.

[Overmod]

charlie hebdo

A passenger line missing Pittsburgh entirely would seems to be a nonstarter. 

This was in the era that Pittsburgh constituted an industrial bottleneck and major pollution source -- probably something that the fast first-class long-distance trains betwee major population centers would not miss by missing.  I would point out that Philadelphia, a far more important city, was only 'served' by these trains at pathetic North Philadelphia, scarcely either a terminal or a neighborhood representing a Major Metropolitan Traffic Point.

The Sam Rea line obviously wasn't a replacement for PRR to Pittsburgh, or even all the passenger traffic from 'points east' through to Chicago or St. Louis.  It's a bypass allowing much higher speed... higher speed not particularly useful for going either from Chicago or New York to Pittsburgh ... and further distinguished by the relative impossibility (then, as now) of constructing a high-speed route that goes through Pittsburgh itself.

It was basically designed as a passenger, mail, and express line, with dramatically limited curvature, rather than the kind of low-grade line that the Atglen and Susquehanna was, and it remains an open question how much of the through freight service out of, say, Enola might have been directed had the line been built as described -- my suspicion is that it would have been built initially as two tracks and operated mostly as a one-speed railroad, meaning only fast freight and M&E that could co-exist in bridge traffic with the faster passenger trains.

Although I know you don't like speculation, the effect on the full electrification program west of Harrisburg would almost certainly have been greatly facilitated in the years after demonstration of 428A-motored AC locomotives; the 1943 proposal is well worth considering in this light.  This part of the service would, more or less at a stroke, permit even greater speed increase and time reduction that AC electrification between New York and Washington did, with all the 'improvements' and lessons learned during the 1930s experience with construction being available.  The question would then be how far west the electrification would actually be continued ... or how much of it would be recognized as functionally obsolescent with the advent of more and more reliable (or perhaps less and less flaky is a better term) diesel power vs. the likely steam power prior to that (almost certainly either duplexes or turbines)   

[Overmod]

charlie hebdo

I think there was a C&NW sleeper that was seasonally loaned and repainted for use on IC trains to Florida.

If I'm not mistaken, we had a fairly recent thread on this general subject that involved 'seasonal' repainting of some IC cars for Florida service.

Which were the Chicago-to-Florida trains that had distinctive liveries?

[charlie hebdo]

Duplicate. 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

In 1967, TRAINS had a pictorial article "A Twist on Tuscan Red" that explored this situation with PRR Pullmans.

[Deggesty]

If you look at lists of cars owned by the various roads, you will find that cars were built for interline service and were painted with the colors of one road--and the letterboards had the names of other roads on them. It was not only for interline east-west traffic, but also the interline New York-Florida traffic and even the Chicago-Florida traffic. The City of Miami had ACL, CG, and FEC cars as well as IC cars--and all were painted in IC colors. Even the Seminole was so made up. 

And, I have ridden in one particular purple RF&P car on the Southern and on the SAL.

 

[Convicted One]

Thanks for that.  I guess that I really never knew enough to appreciate that Pullman Company, Pullman Inc., and Pullman Standard were distinct entities.

[BaltACD]

Convicted One

A question that occurs to me, if PRR sends 7 sleepers to the west coast one day, and 7 more the next, it's going to be several days before they get that equipment back, (poor utilization) and what efforts are made to prevent an empty back haul? Does PRR need to hire a passenger marketing staff for each west coast terminal to market return trips? 

Or was there a TTX-like  car pool that all the participants shared?

I feel certain the 'car lines' as Pullman called them had traffic in both directions - not necessarily equal traffic patterns, but traffic never the less.  Pullman Company was the 'TTX like car pool' operator.  That I am aware of, there were no coaches that were used in interline services. 

The car allocations would be based upon the trip durations.  Cars going off line would have their destinations figured into the number of cars required to provide the required level of service - be that service daily or some other frequency.

The New York-Chicago trains normally required two sets of equipment to protect service.  New York-St. Louis normally required three sets of equipment. 

In the day, the big carriers generally had passenger (and freight) offices in all major cities in the country to seek out  all the available business. 

[matthewsaggie]

Deleted 

[Convicted One]

A question that occurs to me, if PRR sends 7 sleepers to the west coast one day, and 7 more the next, it's going to be several days before they get that equipment back, (poor utilization) and what efforts are made to prevent an empty back haul? Does PRR need to hire a passenger marketing staff for each west coast terminal to market return trips? 

Or was there a TTX-like  car pool that all the participants shared?

[Convicted One]

According to my source, the Wabash first launched a train named the "Cannonball" in early 1887, and it served Chicago/ Kansas City via the Wabash, the T P &W, and the Mopac. Although the source does not give a termination date, it explicitly says that the service was "brief".

 Then on Feb 26, 1950 the Wabash renamed the St Louis Special/Detroit Special to be the Wabash Cannonball, assigned numbers 1, and 4. .  In the 1950s the Cannonball was made up of Chair Cars, a Diner-Lounge, and an Observation car...most of this equipment was rebuilt and refurbished.  This was a day train.

While new streamlined sleepers and 4 Alco PAs were assigned  in 1949 to the overnight "St Louis Limited"/Detroit Limited" trains.

The Cannonball utilized Electromotive diesels

The N&W sought to terminate the Cannonball on May 10 1967, but was unsuccessful.

The Chicago-St Louis "Banner Blue" was by this time combining with the Cannonball at Decatur Ill for it's final leg to St Louis, while the St Louis-Chicago "Bluebird" likewise was combined with the Cannonball between St Louis and Decatur, before splitting out on it's own to continue northward. 

Patronage on the Cannonball fell from 89,800 passengers in 1962, to 68,100 by 1966 (an average of  96 passengers per trip eastbound, and 91 passengers per trip westbound)

N&W claimed to have lost $218,000 operating the Cannonball in 1966. They further reported that the Cannonball collected revenue of $696,000 in 1968, on an operating cost of $1.2 million

Despite repeated attempts throughout the late 1960s by N&W to terminate the Cannonball, the ICC rejected all of them,. Ultimately when the Detroit/St Louis route was not incorporated into the Amtrak system, the Cannonball made it's final run on April 30, 1971

[BaltACD]

Deggesty

Convicted One

Here is an interesting little tidbit that kinda falls into the type of service the OP was talking about.

Although not a sleeper pass thru, but  on June 2 1946 the Wabash and the UP began a "guaranteed connection" agreement  between the Cannonball and UPs' "City of St Louis" at Wabash's Delmar station  going to Los Angeles and (I guess via a SP connection) Oakland.

 

Did the Cannonball run Chicago-St. Louis? I don't have any Wabash information for that period here. After the N&W took over the Wabash operation, the Wabash Cannonball ran Detroit-St. Louis.

To my knowledge, The Wabash Cannonball was always at Detroit-St.Louis train.  The Bluebird and other trains were the Wabash's Chicago-St.Louis trains.

[Deggesty]

[quote user="Convicted One"]

Here is an interesting little tidbit that kinda falls into the type of service the OP was talking about.

Although not a sleeper pass thru, but  on June 2 1946 the Wabash and the UP began a "guaranteed connection" agreement  between the Cannonball and UPs' "City of St Louis" at Wabash's Delmar station  going to Los Angeles and (I guess via a SP connection) Oakland.

 

Did the Cannonball run Chicago-St. Louis? I don't have any Wabash information for that period here. After the N&W took over the Wabash operation, the Wabash Cannonball ran Detroit-St. Louis.

[Convicted One]

Here is an interesting little tidbit that kinda falls into the type of service the OP was talking about.

Although not a sleeper pass thru, but  on June 2 1946 the Wabash and the UP began a "guaranteed connection" agreement  between the Cannonball and UPs' "City of St Louis" at Wabash's Delmar station  going to Los Angeles and (I guess via a SP connection) Oakland.

[CatFoodFlambe]

I don't think the connections to West were all that great at St Louis even in the heyday - I always thought it was more oriented to the Southwestern markets.

 

[Convicted One]

To me the inception of transcontinental sleeper agreements appear to be post-war optimism. Which, in conjunction with decline in passenger revenues overall,... never really payed-off. 

Ultimately NYC and PRR became anxious to reduce passenger services in most any way they could get away with, and these transcons were an easy duck to shoot.

[Jack 64 Brown]

 

Thanks to the many folks who responded to my questions about long-distance rail travel and passenger connections via Chicago or St. Louis.  People had a lot to say, yet it is only honest to note that just one of the 50-odd responses actually tried to answer my questions as posed (thanks to MP 173 for the reference to James Vance’s fine book on railroads and geography).

 

 

 

I especially marveled at the person who wrote that I was asking the wrong question about the wrong eras.

 

 

 

This is perhaps a fool’s errand, but I will try again:

 

 

 

By 1875, St. Louis had consolidated its passenger rail services at a single station, whereas Chicago had five mainline stations.  So on one level, St Louis carriers "should" have done well in the transcontinental passenger business.  But a look at any Official Guide suggests that nearly all the business went through Chicago.  Chicago certainly had far more passenger service overall.

 

Here is my question: can anyone put me on to original sources (1880-1930) that evaluated the pros and cons of the two cities for transcontinental travel?  Or historians accounts?  Did eastern and western carriers enter joint agreements that boosted one or the other city (esp in Golden Age - ie 1880-1930).  Did fares advantage one city over the other?  Travel times?

 

I am looking for source, not opinions.  Focused on the years between 1880 and 1930.  Preferably original sources – such as:

 

-- the Editorial Comments section that typically opened the Official Guide

 

-- publications from the National Association of General Passenger and Ticket Agents

 

-- articles from The Railroad Gazette or other good trade periodicals

 

-- the passenger traffic departments of a given carrier.

 

-- the Chambers of Commerce in either city

 

Many of you focused on why Chicago outstripped St. Louis as a destination.  Admittedly interesting but not quite relevant to the question I posed.  In point of fact, Chicago’s growth as a rail hub had, by the 1880s, become a real problem for anyone trying to move freight or passengers through the area.  Consider this from William Cronon’s history of Chicago, Nature’s Metropolis (p. 372):

 

 

 

“With . . . different stations on opposite sides of town, passengers moving between east and west had no choice but to get off one train, travel crosstown to a different station, and get on another train to continue their journey. . . .  this enforced crosstown movement . . . by the late 1860s was starting to create traffic problems.  Railroads centering in Chicago started having to defend themselves against non-Chicago competitors who claimed in advertisements that passengers traveling through the city could not escape “long and tedious omnibus rides” even if they had booked through tickets.”

 

 

 

So I’d appreciate some leads on sources.  Another key question relevant here: when did ticket agents start writing through tickets for travel across multiple carriers? 

 

 

 

Judging only from the Official Guides on my shelf (1893, 1912, and 1930) individual carriers made no effort to boost through routes via Chicago or St. Louis.  That too is interesting; the dog that did not bark in the night. 

 

 

 

But because the carriers said nothing (at least in that forum), I am willing to bet that others did offer views or guidance to travelers on this matter. 

 

 

 

I don’t claim authoritative knowledge on any of this, hence my questions.  But it is worth noting that east-west travelers arriving at Chicago’s Union Depot (opened in 1881) had an in-station change if transferring from the PRR to the Burlington – and thus onward to the Overland Route on the UP/CP.  And passengers off the C&O at Chicago’s Dearborn Station (opened 1885) had an in-station connection to the AT&SF. 

 

 

 

Still, Chicago was comparatively troublesome and St. Louis comparatively easy for transcontinental travelers – at least in theory.  Surely some carriers, organizations, agents, or journalists had something to say about this disparity -- especially given the continued dominance of Chicago in rail passenger travel across the period.

 

[charlie hebdo]

According to  a prior post on here by timz,  the transcontinental through sleeping cars ran from 1946-1957. As I said above, a declining business by the 1950s.

 

http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/205758.aspx