Original railroads of current routes

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Is there any easy reference to find the original railroads that current Amtrak routes use? Should I just ask here.

Crescent uses the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line from Atlanta to Charlotte then the NCRR from Charlotte to Greensboro and north of Greensboro to Danville the Piedmont Railroad was the original railroad before Southern RR and now the NS.


At some point the original railroads were merged into the companies that were larger networks before we had what we have today.

Wikipedia has current track ownership but I want to go farther back in history to the original rail lines.

 

[Palmland]

I don't know of a single source that will give you want you want. But I use these sources. The 1916 Official Guide will show the railroads in a much earlier era, but obviously not before that. The 1948 Railroad Atlas gives a more modern view of the rail lines at that time. And finally the early Amtrak timetables listed the host railroad.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Some of the original builders of the rail lines were subsidiaries of other or bigger companies and were kept separate for various accounting/liability (financial) reasons. There is a lot of convoluted history there...

 

[John Santos]

It must have been expensive (labor-intensive) to gather all this information. $6.95 was a LOT of money for a paperback book in 1948!

 

[railiner]

As was said, there really is no easy way to find what you’re asking…depending on how detailed and far back, it will take a lot of patience to thoroughly researchp
it all…

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

As was said, there really is no easy way to find what you’re asking…depending on how detailed and far back, it will take a lot of patience to thoroughly researchp
it all…

We basically need a map on Google Earth of current routes and that is easy to download and then get a PDF of this old Guides. I assume most of what is left for Amtrak were the named and famous routes. Might be able to piece things together. The Crescent was the Southern Crescent mostly. I think current Silver Service mimics the older trains to Florida.

I see three stages of history.

3. l Post WWII era where there were still a couple hundred Class I RRs.
2. The 1910 era to early 1920s as NYC to Chicago length passenger trains were happening, and I assume up and down the east coast as well.
3. And the the 1880s-1890s. Was there one train that could take one from Florida to NYC or New Orleans to NYC or Chicago to California in the 1880s, or was it a serious of connections every 500-600 miles?

 

[Willbridge]

There are also some segments that Amtrak is on that did not exist until the 1920's or later. Perhaps the longest examples are the SP Cascade Line and the Rio Grande Gore Canyon Line.

Producing a system map with ownerships can be done but would require a lot of footnotes.

 

[cirdan]

It must have been expensive (labor-intensive) to gather all this information. $6.95 was a LOT of money for a paperback book in 1948!

I guess the market for such a book would have been quite limited, probably being of interest only to a handful of railroad professionals and maybe another handful of hardcore railfans. The overall print run would thus have been quite small, pushing up the per unit costs.

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

It must have been expensive (labor-intensive) to gather all this information. $6.95 was a LOT of money for a paperback book in 1948!

I doubt that is the 1948 price. This atlas was republished by Kalmbach, I believe sometime in the 1970s, at least that is when I bought my copy, which was priced at $8.95 by then.

 

[cirdan]

I doubt that is the 1948 price. This atlas was republished by Kalmbach, I believe sometime in the 1970s, at least that is when I bought my copy, which was priced at $8.95 by then.

This is a good point.

The design of the cover, with its somewhat glossy paper and the blue frame bled to the edges of the page looks more 1970s than 1940s.

Of course with these things one can never be completely certain as design evolves slowly and innovations can have both early leaders and late followers.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Here's a nice map of the situation in 1855, along with an extensive key, listing the major stops on many routes: https://www.loc.gov/item/gm70005364/

I doubt that is the 1948 price. This atlas was republished by Kalmbach, I believe sometime in the 1970s, at least that is when I bought my copy, which was priced at $8.95 by then.

Kalmbach also reprinted the 1928 version, and both were originally Rand McNally. Going back to the 1800s, there were other publishers. The oddest is a 1978 guide by National Railways Pub., in Amtrak 1970s font, but including Mexico and Canada pax schedules. In 1950 National Railways' Official Railway Guide was a monthly, at $25/year or $3/copy. The Rand McNally's were originally a supplement to an every-two-years marketing atlas. And there were maps by Poor's, in a publication mainly about railroad financials, and there was Express Shipping Guide. The Poor's maps are colorful and easy to read, and the Florida one at least is online.

Yeah, I know, too much information, but here's a free version of the state maps in the 1948 Rand McNally: https://trains.rockycrater.org/pfmsig/atlas.php

I guess the market for such a book would have been quite limited, probably being of interest only to a handful of railroad professionals and maybe another handful of hardcore railfans.

And business travelers. The Official Airline Guide (OAG) was a fairly pricey subscription back in the day. It seems to have borrowed its title from the similarly non-official Official Railway Guide.

One thing I noticed in one of those railroad guides reproduced online is how many distant lines had through ticketing, and through sleepers, to, say, New York, making it a bit confusing on first reading.

As for railroad ownership, today we sometimes have major freight lines offloading trackage to short lines, which may get hefty state subsidies. The Buckingham Branch comes to mind.

 

[MARC Rider]

I guess the market for such a book would have been quite limited, probably being of interest only to a handful of railroad professionals and maybe another handful of hardcore railfans. The overall print run would thus have been quite small, pushing up the per unit costs.

Also travel agents (remember them?), but you're right.

 

[rookzie]

As railiner stated and as others have indicated, there really is no easy way to determine current Amtrak routes, many changes of which have evolved since the advent of Amtrak.

Both nature ─ such as epically severe floods from stalled weather fronts and hurricanes (e.g. “Agnes”) and other phenomena ─ and mergers and consolidations since 1976 (Conrail), five years following the official start of Amtrak, have changed the passenger-run landscape dramatically. These factors alone have added multiple layers of complexity to the timeline of historical routes of Amtrak, analogous to layers of sediment in deep soil.

In part answer to the general question, it probably would be of more profound interest to know the timeline of such changes over an arbitrarily selected range of time ─ perhaps even as far back as 1964, when the Wabash and the Nickel Plate Road (NY, Chicago, and StL) were merged with the N&W which in turn merged with the Sou in 1982 to become NS. The reason I say this is that “modern-day” mergers began during the earlier portions of many readers’ lives ─ with a relatively short-span succession starting around 1957, with mergers of the NC&StL with the L&N (CSX predecessors), followed with the merger of the VGN with the N&W in 1959, and the Erie RR with the DL&W in 1960. Then came the merger of the SAL (Seaboard Air Line) with the Atlantic Coasts Line in 1967, as well as the ill-fated merger that became Penn Central in 1968, which laid to rest the single ownership of those involved former Class-Is. Many if not most) of us either have lived through or have at least heard of the many “fallen flag” lines dating that far back and which would be of interest to this topic.

And as JameswhitcomeRiley pointed out, railroad ownership changes since mid-20th century have led to offloading of trackage to short lines, and in some cases abandonment of some segments ─ both minor and major. Add to that, the very recent merger of the KCS with the CP, in conjunction with proposed corridor and long-distance expansion, indeed will only confound this long-convoluted historical past of ownership.

All this only makes it (at least) somewhat challenging to recall the heritage of the current route of the “Capitol Limited”, for example, which does a “musical-chair” routine from WUS (WAS) to CUS. Without my going into too many details, It follows its original namesake B&O path between DC and the eastern outskirts of Pittsburgh. It uses a one-mile connection (via Schenley Tunnel) built for Amtrak in the 1980s to the NS (on the former PRR) line into Pittsburgh. It then follows the NS’ former PRR Ft Wayne Line (PFW&C) to Alliance, OH, where it diverges onto NS’ Cleveland Line (former PRR). In Cleveland at a point called "Silver Plate Junction", the line joins the NS’ former NYCentral New York - Chicago main. Finally, the route returns to the former PRR (at Calumet River Jct) for the last bit of run into CUS. Amtrak's current LSL follows a similarly "alphabetic" route.



So, some arbitrarily chosen time-period limit into the past would have to established for one to compose a reasonably comprehensive mapping of existing (and future) Amtrak routes, along what remains (and what could become resurrected). It would have to be updated periodically.

 

[Willbridge]

In 1969 I rode the 3:30 a.m.± trip on Indiana Motor Bus from Indianapolis to South Bend. Two things that I learned the hard way:

1. Indiana required a full stop and the door opened before crossing a rail line. Or at least IMB did.
2. There were a lot of rail lines to cross.

Keep in mind that this was in manual transmission days and before the wave of Penn Central abandonments and Conrail. It was the worst sleep that I ever had on an intercity bus, but it made the reasoning behind subsequent reorganizations understandable.

 

[fdaley]

Is there any easy reference to find the original railroads that current Amtrak routes use?

It really depends on how you define "original." It's fairly easy to find an Official Guide from the last few years before Amtrak and figure out that the Crescent follows the Southern from New Orleans to Washington and the Penn Central from there to New York. But if you want to go back to the 19th century and figure out all the smaller railroads that eventually merged into these larger ones, that would take a lot more research. I believe the Official Guide started monthly publication in 1893, and there was another publication that preceded it, but finding decent copies from pre-World War II is difficult except for a few that were reprinted on heavier paper. And each one is only a snapshot of the railroad system and individual railroads that existed in that particular month and year.

 

[west point]

Then you have certain states that required any operating company to be based in their state. Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas come to mind but are there others?

 

[railiner]

It really depends on how you define "original." It's fairly easy to find an Official Guide from the last few years before Amtrak was created and figure out that the Crescent follows the Southern from New Orleans to Washington and the Penn Central from there to New York. But if you want to go back to the 19th century and figure out all the smaller railroads that eventually merged into these larger ones, that would take a lot more research. I believe the Official Guide started monthly publication in 1893, and there was another publication that preceded it, but finding decent copies from pre-World War II is difficult except for a few that were reprinted on heavier paper. And each one is only a snapshot of the railroad system and individual railroads that existed in that particular month and year.

That is exactly what I was alluding to...even if you go back shortly before Amtrak and study say, the New York Central System, you can go much further back into maybe hundreds of smaller lines that combined, merged, later separated, still later merged again...quite a formidable task...

 

[railiner]

Here's one place where you can browse old Official Guides online....

https://timetableworld.com/timetables.php

 

[dlagrua]

Looking at the old railroad passenger line maps, it is obvious that you could travel most anywhere in the USA without going through Chicago if it wasn't needed. For instance if you wanted to travel to Kansas City from Philadelphia, the National Ltd went directly West at Pittsburgh. If you wanted to go to El Paso and then South West directly from Chicago, the Southern Pacific took you there. All the major cities had rail service. The FRA proposal to extend national service is great but years away. There is no equipment to support the network that Amtrak currently has let alone to expand the routes.

 

[MARC Rider]

Looking at the old railroad passenger line maps, it is obvious that you could travel most anywhere in the USA without going through Chicago if it wasn't needed. For instance if you wanted to travel to Kansas City from Philadelphia, the National Ltd went directly West at Pittsburgh. If you wanted to go to El Paso and then South West directly from Chicago, the Southern Pacific took you there. All the major cities had rail service. The FRA proposal to extend national service is great but years away. There is no equipment to support the network that Amtrak currently has let alone to expand the routes.

The days of long-distance trains serving every city in the country are long gone and are not going to be coming back unless there's some sort of apocalypse that somehow eliminates mass automobile ownership and affordable air travel without destroying the railroad network. And in that case, I would expect that the immediate fix would be to beef up intercity bus service. It would be a lot cheaper and require much less need to spend on infrastructure.

 

[Burns651]

Get the regional atlases published by Steam Powered Video from ca. 1993 to the early 2010s (Great Lakes East, Mountain Plains, Appalachia & Piedmont etc). They attempt to show all common carriers, isolated lines and interurbans that were ever built, and managed to complete all of the US and Canada, with some revised editions. Not without errors, but overall a fantastic resource and I never go on a trip without them. Lines abandoned at time of publication are shown as dashed. All out of print now but you can find them for sale online.

 

[fdaley]

Get the regional atlases published by Steam Powered Video from ca. 1993 to the early 2010s (Great Lakes East, Mountain Plains, Appalachia & Piedmont etc). They attempt to show all common carriers, isolated lines and interurbans that were ever built, and managed to complete all of the US and Canada, with some revised editions. Not without errors, but overall a fantastic resource and I never go on a trip without them. Lines abandoned at time of publication are shown as dashed. All out of print now but you can find them for sale online.

Yes, I have a few of those SPV atlases, and they are impressive -- particularly for their detail in showing long-gone ghost lines.

 

[Shanson]

Last time I looked, Kalmbach still was still selling a number of those atlases. The Texas one is definitely not available, and eBay sellers were wanted $130.00. Pretty hefty mark up.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Get the regional atlases published by Steam Powered Video from ca. 1993 to the early 2010s (Great Lakes East, Mountain Plains, Appalachia & Piedmont etc). They attempt to show all common carriers, isolated lines and interurbans that were ever built, and managed to complete all of the US and Canada, with some revised editions. Not without errors, but overall a fantastic resource and I never go on a trip without them. Lines abandoned at time of publication are shown as dashed. All out of print now but you can find them for sale online.

I have one of these for NC and used it in my earth sci class as I had a large lesson where student had to map out a rail line from North Wilkesboro to Boone, NC. I think it got messed up and is not longer in my possession but those were good books.

 

[John Santos]

I guess the market for such a book would have been quite limited, probably being of interest only to a handful of railroad professionals and maybe another handful of hardcore railfans. The overall print run would thus have been quite small, pushing up the per unit costs.

Actually, I think every travel agency and businesses with lots of road salesmen and many public libraries would have had a copy.

When I first started work for a very small computer software company in the 1970's, we had an office copy of the Official Airline Guide (a massive, big city telephone directory size large format paperback) which we got updated once or twice a year, and used whenever we had to make our fairly frequent trips to customer sites. High-speed (9800 baud!) communications and ultimately the Internet in the 1990's really eliminated most of our trips. We might still have a copy of the OAG in the office, but if so, it is probably decades out of date.

I would bet by the late 1950's to early 1960's, the OAG had replaced the Official Guide of the Railways.

BTW, in many Sherlock Holmes stories, he consults the British equivalent to find the next train to some obscure village in Shropshire or somewhere and there is always a train in a few hours!