Bad orders, pre-Amtrak

[DET63]

In the days before Amtrak, a given railroad company probably operated only a few trains: maybe 1 or 2 LD services, as well as some regional or commuter-rail services. It probably didn't have as much extra rolling stock available as Amtrak does now. So what happened if a car was bad-ordered, or if routine maintenance was due? Was the entire train-set removed from service, were cars from other train sets substituted, or was the train-set operated simply with 1 or 2 fewer cars?

 

[jphjaxfl]

In pre Amtrak days, nearly all the railroads had many extra passenger cars. Sometimes they would substitute older heavy weight cars for streamlined cars. Railroads would also rent passenger cars from other railroads if they were experiencing heavy volume on certain routes like Midwest and Northeast to Florida routes during the winter months. Railroads also kept extra passenger coaches at the major stations along the routes in case there was heavy traffic. Most railroads did not require reservations for coach travel except on certain of their Blue Ribbon trains.

For example, the Louisville and Nashville which ran from Cincinnati to New Orleans and Atlanta and St. Louis to Atlanta plus other lines maintained passenger cars at Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans, St. Louis, Evansville, Atlanta, Memphis, Bowling Green and sometimes Chattanooga and Knoxville. I remember riding L&N trains in the 60s when extra cars would be added at Louisville due to a movement of Ft Knox Soldiers or at Nashville after a large crowd that attended the Grand Old Oprey came to board the trains. Every now and then they would have a heavy weight 1920s dining car on the Pan American substituting for the counter lounge car. This occured on other railroad's passenger trains as well. It was neat to be able to ride some of the older equipment.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

I agree with all that iphjaxfl said and I experienced many of the same trains he experienced.

Yes, in the preAmtrak days there were many many more trains going many.many more places than they do today. No comparison.

Certainly there were more standby cars than today. In fact lack of standby long distance equipment is one of Amtrak's biggest problems. Just recently I rode the Crescent from Atlanta to Washington and both sleepers were bad ordered. But instead of substitute sleepers or extra coaches they just crammed us into the regular coaches.We still got our "free" dining car meals.

But wait, something similar, in reverse, did happen to me in 1964 on the old Dixie Flyer(not to be confused with Dixie Flagler) from Chattanooga to Chicago. It was a few days before Christmas, with trains were big and heavy everywhere, and that particular train by that time was all coach. But they could not find spare coaches so they put us in an older upper berth lower berth spare section sleeper, and at no extra cost! Kind of a benefit.

Sometimes railroads were able to borrow from other railroads. This was especially true of sleeping cars for those railroad which cooperated with the Pullman company. It was relatively easy to lease pullman sleepers around to and from other lines, both on a regular basis, like in the winter Florida travel (which iphiaxfl mentioned) and also for spur of the moment needs.Like bad order.

Note that there were many many more types of sleeping cars than there are today. Sometimes the host road might have a spare sleeper but entirely different from the one to be bad ordered. Perhaps,another line in the same city would have the correct type of sleeper available to substittue.

One of the joys in old time railroading (I am 64) was to go down to the station and see, lo and behold, some car from some railroad I had scarcely heard of. And not just substitute cars, also extra cars, like during holidays, or political conventions or sports events of something like those.

You speak a lot of "train sets", note that trains were often quite long, equipment often only operated part of the trip, all sorts of moving around cars largely unknown today. Are you aware of how the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited meet with each other at San Antonio? And how the Empire Builder divides at Spokane part to Seattle and part to Portland? Well that is nothing compared to the old days. Lots and lots of equipment manipulations all over the country. Hard to say what one train's specific "trainset" actually involved.

You would be fascinated with an old timetable or old Official Railway Guide. You might want to look for them on e-bay or something.

Today's Amtrak timetable has 114 pages. I have on my desk a 1957 Official Guide. It has 1490 pages.

Keep in mind that Amtrak began by tearing it all down and re building US lines with just a few of the routes which held the most promise. Building them up and others would follow. At least that was the publicly professed intention. The rest is history. Amtrak has done some beautiful things,in spite of so much going against it. But it has not come close to restoring all the trains there used to be.

 

[MrFSS]

Picture I took in the mid 50's of the EB coming into CUS. Note the variety of color schemes in the part of the consist I captured with my little Kodak camera.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Picture I took in the mid 50's of the EB coming into CUS. Note the variety of color schemes in the part of the consist I captured with my little Kodak camera.

That is good. That backs up what I was saying. Those three cars in the middle of your photo do not normally belong on the EB. The "pure" EB cars were the lightweight orange and green. These other cars,obviously heavyweight, were either substitute cars or extra cars. Maybe this was the height of the summer travel season.

A kid down at the station just watching the train go by would be fascinated at seeing this "different" equipment.

 

[MrFSS]

That is good. That backs up what I was saying. Those three cars in the middle of your photo do not normally belong on the EB. The "pure" EB cars were the lightweight orange and green. These other cars,obviously heavyweight, were either substitute cars or extra cars. Maybe this was the height of the summer travel season.
A kid down at the station just watching the train go by would be fascinated at seeing this "different" equipment.

Bill - did the EB have cars that connected to east coast trains (NYC, PRR, etc)?

I think that red and gray car is a Frisco car. At least someone has said that on my photo site.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

That is good. That backs up what I was saying. Those three cars in the middle of your photo do not normally belong on the EB. The "pure" EB cars were the lightweight orange and green. These other cars,obviously heavyweight, were either substitute cars or extra cars. Maybe this was the height of the summer travel season.
A kid down at the station just watching the train go by would be fascinated at seeing this "different" equipment.

Bill - did the EB have cars that connected to east coast trains (NYC, PRR, etc)?

I think that red and gray car is a Frisco car. At least someone has said that on my photo site.

No, I do not think the EB ever had transcon sleepers.

I, too, think the red car is Frisco. I also think the next two are New York Central. None of which belong under normal circumstances. All of which would make it intriging to the train watcher.

 

[MrFSS]

No, I do not think the EB ever had transcon sleepers.
I, too, think the red car is Frisco. I also think the next two are New York Central. None of which belong under normal circumstances. All of which would make it intriging to the train watcher.

As it was to me almost 55 years ago. Must have been why I took the picture.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Even in the few days before Amtrak came into operation, the Pennsylvania railroad alone operated more trains a day then Amtrak operates now.

Back in the fifties, trains went every which way all day long with astonishing frequency. Every station you stop at on Amtrak that has clearly been built with many tracks did so because they served many many trains.

Think of it this way: at its height of car ownership, Pullman owned over 6,000 sleepers. Amtrak currently operates 197 such cars. In 1974, Amtrak had about 360 sleepers in its fleet. Amtrak rejected two thirds of the cars it was offered (almost all subsequently scrapped in short order), and threw out about half of the ones it initially accepted by '74. So if we apply this proportionally (obviously flawed thinking) the sleepers Amtrak was offered (which was not all of them by far) was 2,160. Get the picture?

 

[MikefromCrete]

Let's not forget that the Pullman Co. operated what was essentially a nation-wide pool of sleeping cars, available for operation across the country for special movements and seasonal variations in ridership.

 

[PaulM]

Are you aware of how the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited meet with each other at San Antonio? And how the Empire Builder divides at Spokane part to Seattle and part to Portland? Well that is nothing compared to the old days. Lots and lots of equipment manipulations all over the country.

My favorite was the Hummingbird - Georgan (did I spell that right?) combination. It was a network all by itself. Some of the terminal points were St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Atlanta, New Orleans, and possibly Memphis. For all I know the Crescent, Piedmont Limited, and Gulf Wind may have dangled off of it, or was that the Pan American.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Are you aware of how the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited meet with each other at San Antonio? And how the Empire Builder divides at Spokane part to Seattle and part to Portland? Well that is nothing compared to the old days. Lots and lots of equipment manipulations all over the country.

My favorite was the Hummingbird - Georgan (did I spell that right?) combination. It was a network all by itself. Some of the terminal points were St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Atlanta, New Orleans, and possibly Memphis. For all I know the Crescent, Piedmont Limited, and Gulf Wind may have dangled off of it, or was that the Pan American.

Humming Bird was two words and Georgian had an "i" in it.(for the record South Wind was two words also.

It was: Cincinnati -NOL HB

Cincinnati -MEM HB

Chicago to Mobile, sometimes, NOL HB

St.Louis to Montgomery,sometimes Mobile HB

Chicago to ATl GA

St.Louis to ATL GA

Cincinnati, sometimes Louisville, to ATL HB/GA (exchanged at Nashville)

The HB from Cincinnati to Memphis and NOL ran together as far as Bowling Green, Ky. The CHI and STL and Cincinnati HB ran together from Nashville south to NOL.

They were always combined between Evansville and St.Louis and at times combined between Chicago and Nashville and or Chicago and Evansville.At one time northbound from Evansville to StL they were combined with an otherwise unrelated train from Louisville. All terribly confusing unless you grew up with such things.

All that combining made for late trains, waiting for each other, and sometimes very long trains having to make double stops. It became a disaster for timekeeping whereas ,operated at one as one train you could milk the cows by them.

The Pan American, Piedmont Limited, Gulf Wind and Crescent(not to be confused with today's Crescent which was really the Southerner back then)were entangled variously amongst themselves, but not with the HB and the Georgian. And their merging and combining with each other changed through the years.

 

[abqdave]

How in the world could Pullman or the railroads keep track of all their equipment in pre-computer days? No RFID tags on the equipment... No GPS... thousands of cars that could be almost anyplace at any particular time. Pretty amazing.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

How in the world could Pullman or the railroads keep track of all their equipment in pre-computer days? No RFID tags on the equipment... No GPS... thousands of cars that could be almost anyplace at any particular time. Pretty amazing.

What amazes me is that people find it amazing. People have devolved.

 

[wayman]

How in the world could Pullman or the railroads keep track of all their equipment in pre-computer days? No RFID tags on the equipment... No GPS... thousands of cars that could be almost anyplace at any particular time. Pretty amazing.

What amazes me is that people find it amazing. People have devolved.

A hundred years ago engineers designed powerful locomotives using pens and straightedges and sliderules and big pieces of paper. Didn't even have calculators. No copy machine to make duplicates. Many people today, so used to doing everything on a computer, can't figure out how this kind of incredible productivity was possible.

To them, I have a very simple answer: there were no bloody conference calls back then

 

[jackal]

Picture I took in the mid 50's of the EB coming into CUS. Note the variety of color schemes in the part of the consist I captured with my little Kodak camera.

Wow. That picture has an almost model railroad-like quality to it. Nice shot!

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Are you aware of how the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited meet with each other at San Antonio? And how the Empire Builder divides at Spokane part to Seattle and part to Portland? Well that is nothing compared to the old days. Lots and lots of equipment manipulations all over the country.

My favorite was the Hummingbird - Georgan (did I spell that right?) combination. It was a network all by itself. Some of the terminal points were St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnatti, Atlanta, New Orleans, and possibly Memphis. For all I know the Crescent, Piedmont Limited, and Gulf Wind may have dangled off of it, or was that the Pan American.

Paul, I have gone back and made adjustments to my original response to your post, if you care to read that.

Another very complicated train was the preAmtrak Texas Eagle. In fact TRAINS Magazine once did an article on just these two train operations, the Humming Bird/Georgian and the Texas Eagle.

This run down on the TE is not meant to be complete or valid at any one time as all these wierd consists changed around through the years.

But here goes a simplified incomplete basic:

The backbone of the TE operation was two main trains, the South Texas Eagle which went from STL to Palestine, TX, where it divided, one section to San Antonio, one to Houston.

Then there was the West Texas Eagle from STL to Dallas, FW, EL Paso.

There were through sleepers from New York and Chicago to Texas points and even a slumbercoach from Baltimore to San Antonio.

Through coach and sleeper from Memphis to Dallas/FW. And a sleeper from Memphis to Houston.Transfered at Little Rock to the bigger trains from STL to Texas.

Other things like a sleeper from STL to Hot Springs.

Also a through sleeper CHI to MEXICO CITY, of all things.(maybe at times from STL to Mexico City)

A through sleeper from Dallas to LA, turned over to trains like the Sunset Limited at El Paso.

Note that the train originated primarily in STL, not CHI.(though had through sleepers from CHI)

During the "golden years" the West Texas and South Texas sections of the trains operated within about 20 or 30 minutes of each other. In later years, though, as business started drying up, the two big trains out of STL finally combined into one very long train going more or less everywhere.

My first time to ride the TE was in a Memphis to Dallas coach. During the layover in Little Rock, I had the high honour of watching each beautiful blue almost 20 car streamliner rolling in from STL. It was a thrill. My car, of course would be attached to the rear of the West Texas Eagle

That was also my first time to ride in a dome car. Missouri Pacific RR called them planetarium domes for some reason.

I mentioned the two trains from STL being very long, that is probably because it was near Christmas. Standby cars, the original point of this thread.

 

[Larry H.]

Very sad to read of all the wonderful rolling stock and efficient trains that no longer exist with basically no intention it would seem to bring anything like it back. If were going to be forced in to GM cars that have a 40 mile one way electric range, someone is going to have to bring the trains back!

Speaking of the bad orders, how do the european railroads compare in back up equipment to what we see here?