After looking in the May, 1958 Guide, I must make a correction: P&LE Pittsburgh-Youngstown, NYC Youngstown-Ashtabula-Buffalo-Welland, TH&B Welland-Hamilton, and CP Hamilton-Toronto
Johnny
Oh, yes, NYC was the parent of the P&LE, and both NYC & CP were the parents of the TH&B.
You have it, Johnny! P&LE carried the car to Youngstown, NYC to Ashtabula, NYC to Buffalo, NYC(MC)/TH&B/CP to Toronto.
For several years, many roads had stewardesses or nurses or stewardess-nurses on certain passenger trains. However, in April of 1958, only one road is shown in the Guide as having such--and it shows that four trains carried them. What road was it, and what were the trains?
AT&SF? Chief, Super Chief, El Capitan, and either Texas Chief or San Francisco Chief. Or do you count the El Capitan and Super as one train, in which case all the above.
Sorry, Dave; you have the wrong road.
Johnny,
Would it be NYC? The trains that featured stewardesses would include the Century, Commodore, Detroiter and New England States.
I think in 1958 there were other trains that had stewardesses. Off the top of my head some of those trains would be CIty of Miami, North Coast Limited, CZ and Silver Meteor/Silver Star.
Myron
Myron, you have named some trains that did offer such service--but no longer offered it by Spring of 1958.
I do not recall that the NYC or the IC ever offered such.
B&O Capitol Limited, Shenandoah, Diplomat and National Limited
Rob, you have the road--and you have three of the four right--Capitol Limited, Shenandoah, National Limited, and--Columbian.
Apparently, the other roads had come to the point that it was no longer cost-effective to provide the service. I have not looked to see when the B&O stopped.
I was working from a 1957 OG. I think the Columbian name replaced the Diplomat in early 1958. I'm pretty sure CB&Q/NP continued summer-only Stewardess Nurse service into the 1960s.
Pittsburgh Railways had 666 PCC cars, all bought from St. Lois Car. The cars were bought in large lots, six lots of 100 cars each, one lot of 65 cars, and one single car. The single car was not numbered in the 1000 series like all of the others (there were no 1300-series cars).
The quiz question: What was unique about the single car?
For extra credit, what was special about the first car of the 1600 series? The first 25 cars of the 1700 series were also different from other PCC cars.
Deggesty I do not recall that the NYC or the IC ever offered such.
In late 1956 NYC replaced the male secretaries on the Century with "Girls of the Century", sort of a combination Hostess-Stewardess. I think they lasted until the late 1950's.
The City of Miami had a Stewardess-Nurse/Stewardess from its inception until the autumn of 1957. Of the three Chicago-Miami streamliners, CoM was the only one who had them.
The single car was the sample car diverted from the 100-car order by the BMT subsidiary B&QT (Brooklyn and Queens Transit) and was of the two very first standard (as opposed to experimental) PCC cars built, the twin of car 1001 at Branford (Shore Line Trolley Museum, East Haven and Branford, CT, www.bera.org.
I think the car carried the number 100. It was built by St. Louis in 1935. It operated in revenue service untl well after WWII. until the massive bus conversions started about 1962. The 1000-series Pittsburgh PCC cars started arriving in later 1936. The last were the 1700's, the series with standee windows, 25 equipped with special trucks and additional roof front headlight and pilot for interurban service, that arrived in 1949. All Pittsburgh PCC's were St. Louis cars. 100 may have had GE electrical equipment, but all the rest were Westinghouse equipped.:
The 1700's also had improved ventilation fans, also applied to the first 1600 along with the interurban equipment.
For Brooklyn, the sample car that was diverted to Pittsburgh was replaced by the only aluminum PCC, No. 1000, built as an experiment by the Clark Equipment Co., and slightly squarer and less streamlined that the standard PCC. All equipment was standard, however, including lighting and seats. It pioneered standee windowsw, the only pre-WWII PCC with them.
The 1600's and 1700's were all-electric, without air. One 1600 came equipped with the roof headlight, special trucks and pilot that came with the 25 1700's built for interurban service. All-electrics had extended dynamic brakes and solonoid final brakes that also served as parking brakes. As well as the usual magnetic track brakes.
Dave is correct. PRys 100 was the first production PCC in revenue service. It was renumbered M-11 in 1957 for service as an instruction car, retired in 1960, scrapped in 1967. It did have Westinghouse equipment.
The only series group of less than 100 cars were the 1500s (1500-1564) which were delivered as no-frills models under a War Production Board order. As far as I know they were the only PCCs ordered and built during WWII. The 1400 series was ordered in 1941 and delivered in 1942. (1440 survives at the Seashore Trolley Museum)
The 1600s were air-electric except for car 1600, which was the first all-electric PCC. 1630 was the first car equipped at the factory with what became the standard forced-air ventilation for all-electric cars.
1700-1724 were equipped with Clark B3 trucks (standard was clark B2), headlights and additional field taps. All 1700s were all-electric.
PRys cars were equipped about 75%-25% by Westinghouse and GE respectively. The peak of 666 active PCCs was only reached for a little over a year before service reductions and a carbarn fire took their toll. PAT only got about 150, from the 1600 and 1700 series.
The Boston Elevated Ry. ordered 100 mu PCC's in 1942 and 75 more in 1943. The War Production Board allowed 100 to be delivered in 1944. 100 more were ordered in 1944. 112 were delivered in 1945, about half before Japan surrendered. So Boston received about 156 PCC's that were both ordered and delivered during WWII. Other cities that ordered and received PCC's during WWII include the three Canadian cities that operated PCC's: Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. In the USA, in addition to Pitsburgh and Boston, were Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
Except for 3000, the first Boston PCC, all others were by Pullman
New Question. You are going from New York to New Orleans by sleeping car in 1954. Name all possible routes and trains, railroads and connection points. You can only change once, although any car you are riding can be switched from one train to another. Through cars without change count, of course, and any change of cars must be east of Pittsburgh, east of Chattanooga, and not west of Birmingham, in other words a reasonbly direct route. No backtracking, of course.
Even the Pittsburgh Rys 1700s were split Westinghouse/GE.
Could you set a reasonable limit for the count of routes fron New York to New Orleans (say 10 or 12)? That gives a target to shoot for for those of us with limited OG access.
Working from the October, 1953, Guide, I found a few routes for sleeper service from New York to New Orleans--two through and seven which entailed one change (though some entailed long waits between trains).
The two through routings are, of course, the Southern's Crescent and Pelican, with the PRR providing the service north of Washington. The Crescent used the Southern Washington to Atlanta, the A&WP/WRA (WPRte) Atlanta to Montgomery, and the L&N Montgomery to New Orleans; the Piedmont Limited also used this route. The Pelican used the Southern Washington to Monroe and Bristol to New Orleans, with the N&W forwarding the train between Monroe and Bristol (Monroe, Virginia, was a crew terminal on the Southern).
If you allow the use of the B&O between Jersey City and Washington, it was possible to take the Capitol Limited to Washington and connect with the Crescent there, or take the Shenandoah and connect with the Pelican.
Another possibility making use of the N&W would have been to take the New York-Roanoke sleeper, which went through Harrisburg and Hagerstown, (leave New York at 6:45 p.m., arrive in Roanoke the next morning at 9:25--but wait until 5:35 the following morning and take the Pelican [not recommended].
If you wanted to spend a few hours in Birmingham, you could take the Birmingham Special's through sleeper, arriving at 9:30 in the morning, and leaving on either the Pelican or the Pan American for an overnight trip to Crescent City. Or, take the SAL's Silver Comet, which also arrived in the morning, and then go overnight.
One other possible routing is more round-about, but involved no backtracking: take the Silver Meteor to Jacksonville, spend the day there, and take the Gulf Wind west. I am not sure, but I doubt that the fare for this route was competitive with the other, more direct routes.
I gather from the instructions that taking either the New York-Nashville or New York-Memphis sleeper, which went through Cincinnati (PRR-L&N), and changing to the Cincinnati-New Orleans car is not allowed.
Deggesty I gather from the instructions that taking either the New York-Nashville or New York-Memphis sleeper, which went through Cincinnati (PRR-L&N), and changing to the Cincinnati-New Orleans car is not allowed.
There are a bunch of usable combinations via Cincinnati or Louisville - though Louisville required changing stations. I came up with B&O/L&N, PRR/L&N (via Harrisburgh) PRR/C&O/L&N and NYC/L&N (two in each direction). Another route which didn't involve backtracking but doesn't comply with the rules involved two changes of cars - PRR or B&O New York-Washington, SOU/N&W/SOU/IC Washington-Jackson MS (car for Shreveport) and IC to New Orleans (tight connection to Panama Limited).
Diggesty came up with the nine that I considered, and he gets to ask the next question. But what is really interesting, even shocking, is there was no through Pullman at the time on the route used by the Southern's own all-coach streamliner, the Southerner, via Birmingham, Southern all the way! And this is the route used by Amtrak today. Of course, the two via the B&O are also questionable, since the sleepers left from Jersey City, not NY, and required a bus-via-ferry or ferry connection. The route via Roanoke and the through sleeper via Harrisburg was probably fare competitive and certainly useful to anyone wishing to stop over in Roanoke. Jacksonville is also OK although probably at a higiher fare.
As to the consist of the Southerner, until it was inaugurated in 1940, there was no through service New York-New Orleans via Atlanta and Birmingham. After the New Yorker (inaugurated about 1947)--northbound only and using sleepers that came into Atlanta on the Peach Queen was abolished in 1953, the Southerner began carrying New York-Atlanta and Washington-Atlanta sleepers, just as the New Yorker had carried. The New York sleepers from the New Yorker were carried to New York on the same schedule as that used for the northbound Southerner. In time, one sleeper on the Southerner was extended to Birmingham, and later in time was extended to New Orleans--and just before the inauguration of Amtrak one was extended to Los Angeles (and, for a while under Amtrak this was a Boston-Los Angeles sleeper).
Question: when the Southern's Birmingham Special was operated all the way on the Southern from Washington to Birmingham, why did a passenger who wanted to detrain for Atlanta have to listen carefully to the announcement of the station?
Johnny, I'm at a loss to answer the question. The June 1954 OG shows the Birmingham Special running between Washington and Birmingham via Chattanooga with no convenient connecting SR train to Atlanta. The southbound Special arrived in Chattanooga at 7:10 am too late to connect with the Ponce De Leon which left Chattanooga for Atlanta at 5:00 am. The next SR train was the Royal Palm which didn't depart from Chattanooga until 5:20 pm. The first possible connecting train on the NC&StL was the Dixie Flyer but it didn't leave Chattanooga for Atlanta until 3:50 pm.
The SR did have two stations in Atlanta: the downtown Terminal Station and the outlying Peachtree Station.
Mark
But lots of Southern trains stopped at both stations, and yes, on all of those trains you had to listen carefully to get off at the station you wanted or you might get off one station too soon..
The same with the C&O in Charlottesville, particularly eastbound.
We need to go back a little before the fifties--to the twenties, when this train did not run over the N&W, but stayed on the Southern's main line all the way (though it used the former East Tennessee Virginia and Georgia's track from where the main line reached it to Austell).
Dave is hitting close to it, but there is a somewhat obscure matter that clouded the issue at times.
The two Atlanta downtown stations in the 1920s were Terminal Station and Union Station (1871 version). My offhand guess is that the former ETV&G line went through Union Station on its way to Austell (the connection may have involved a backup move). Today's Peachtree Station in the Buckhead area of Atlanta was then known as Brookwood.
One commenet: The through NY - New Orleans sleeper(s) were added to the Southener only when the Crescent sleepers were no longer handled on the West Point route (which went freight-only a short time later). The Crescent did contnue NY Atlanta service for a short time afterward but then was dropped entirely. The Piedmont's NY - New Orleans sleeper(s) had been dropped earlier. This was all in the 1960's, exept the Piedmont's sleeper, late 1950's, assuming my memory is correct, and I did use these trains.
A correction, Dave: the New York-Birmingham sleeper was extended to New Orleans between 10/30/60 and 4/30/61--several years before the Crescent died as a through train.
Rob, you are also coming close to the nature of the problem.
The H line of the Southern runs from Chattanooga through Atlanta to Brunswick, Georgia, and until the late spring of 1968 the Southerner headed into Atlanta and then backed to Birmont so it could proceed to Birmingham. Since the Terminal Station in Birmingham was west of the AGS main, the southbound Southerner and other trains backed out of it. Northbound, the trains backed into Birmingham, and the Southerner backed into the Atlanta station. In the late spring of 1968, the Southern began moving the engine from one end of the train to the other and turning the coach seats in Atlanta so a backup move was no longer necessary, and later, I think it was in 1970, began using the suburban station as the only stop in Atlanta; by this time there was only one Southern train into Atlanta.
The January 1930 OG shows the B'ham Spcl stopping only at Peachtree Station at 10:30 am. Leaving Peachtree Station, the next stop is shown as Austell so it apparently bypassed Terminal Station (or at least passed through it without stopping). Terminal Station was the SR's main depot in Atlanta and most passengers were used to detraining there so they would have to be alert and recognize they needed to get off at Peachtree when that station was announced if Atlanta was their destination.
Mark, you have come the closest to the answer. Going into the Terminal station would have involved a backup, unless the engine were put on the other end. If the traveler was not aware that the people in Atlanta called the station by one name and the Southern called it by another, he might not get off where he should.
52-55 years ago, there was an article in the morning Atlanta paper about the station, and one of the Atlantans remembered that someone had been told by someone expecting the traveler to get off at the Brookwood station since the train did not go in to the Terminal station. However, a trainman announced "Peachtree Station," and not "Brookwood"--so the traveler was carried several miles past Atlanta.
Now the only announcement is for "Atlanta."
When I passed through Atlanta last September, I stepped off, and it looked as though half the population of Atlanta had come home, riding coach.
Deggesty When I passed through Atlanta last September, I stepped off, and it looked as though half the population of Atlanta had come home, riding coach.
Rode NY to Atlanta last week - well-populated train. Peachtree looks a little shopworn but is clean.
So, Mark-KC-fan, let's have the next question!
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