Original railroads of current routes

[John Santos]

The constant changes in ownership, railroads creating subsidiaries to own some of their ROWs, spinning them off, selling them to other railroads, acquiring spun-off subsidiaries and independent short lines, merging, stripping assets and selling off the remainder, etc. dates back to the earliest days of the railroads, such as the times of Vanderbilt and the 19th century robber barons. A lot of it was motivated by acquiring federal, state and local subsidies which had restrictions on who could get the money, and a lot of out-right criminal fraud. (Look at what Jay Gould and Jim Fisk did to Cornelius Vanderbilt and then what Gould and Russell Sage did to Cyrus Fields. Not to mention the Ames brothers and Credit Mobilier.)

Actually, I think it predates railroads and goes back to canal boats and the Chesapeake & Ohio and Erie canals.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

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.

I found some used versions around $40 cheaper plus shipping (some said free).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1874745153/ref=dp_olp_USED_mbc

 

[Willbridge]

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 We might still have a copy of the OAG in the office, but if so, it is probably decades out of date.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!

I think it was Dr. Watson who checked schedules.

The 1916 Guide reprint shows that level of service in New England and the mid-Atlantic states.

I have a 1965 Guide that I just about had to arm-wrestle away from the Army's Berlin Rail Transportation Office in 1971. It was the last one that they had received. The German staff couldn't believe what was happening to U.S. rail passenger service.

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

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!

I believe that was Bradshaw's Guide which lasted until 1961 as a source of all train schedules in Britain.

 

[Palmland]

Until mid 60’s, almost every small station and large terminals had a ticket agents where you could find a rack that provided free copies of the local railroads timetables and other major ones around the country. Of course the agents used the Official Guide of the Railways.

The last one I have is dated May 1972. It was 721 pages (as compared to 1600 in the 1916 one) and listed all the railroads and the management staffing for all their department including online traffic offices. For the larger ones it included their condensed freight schedules and any commuter services. At the front was Amtrak schedules.

 

[jis]

I believe that was Bradshaw's Guide which lasted until 1961 as a source of all train schedules in Britain.

Indeed! Its cousin, the Indian Bradshaw lasted at least till the '90s. Newmans continued to compile and publish it.

 

[fdaley]

The Official Railway Guide, as it was called in latter years, continued to publish at least into the 1990s. Sometime after Amtrak's creation, it was divided into passenger and freight editions. The passenger edition was geared toward travel agents; the few copies I have from the late '70s and early '80s are pretty thin and include the complete Amtrak and VIA schedules as well as those of the Mexican trains and selected longer-distance commuter runs. Then in the late '80s and early '90s, the issues bulked up again because they started including the complete Amtrak tariff. In those days before dynamic pricing, you could use the guide to look up all the fares, including sleeper charges, between any two points on any Amtrak train.

Edit to add: According to Wikipedia, the last passenger edition was published in 1993; the freight edition continued in some form until 2020.

 

[John Santos]

I believe that was Bradshaw's Guide which lasted until 1961 as a source of all train schedules in Britain.

Yes, that was it, and @Willbridge is correct: he always told Watson to check the Bradshaw's, or at least, to find it so he could check. After all, as merely being a doctor, Watson obviously had nothing better to do.

 

[cirdan]

Indeed! Its cousin, the Indian Bradshaw lasted at least till the '90s. Newmans continued to compile and publish it.

Also the British successor toe Bradshaws, the BR Timetable, was still being printed in the late 1990s. I'm not sure when they finally stopped. In the final years copies were quite hard to come by at stations as they had ramped down print volumes. I have a copy that is circa 1999 that I fished out of a dumpster.

Switzerland stopped production of the print version of the "Kursbuch" I think in the early 2000s, but following protests they resumed. I'm not sure if it is still produced today. I have several years. There was also a formidable accompanying volume, the bus timetable, which listed every bus service in the country.

 

[Willbridge]

Yes, that was it, and @Willbridge is correct: he always told Watson to check the Bradshaw's, or at least, to find it so he could check. After all, as merely being a doctor, Watson obviously had nothing better to do.

There were a couple of Sherlock Holmes lines that I had posted in my office as being relevant to transit planning. I don't have them handy, but can paraphrase:

• Looking in a guide, Watson observes "We're in luck, Holmes, it is only a five-mile walk from the station to the manor house." With a coverage like that, huge swaths of late 19th - early 20th Century industrial areas could be considered to have service.
• Watson comments on how peaceful the countryside is, and Holmes replies with a speech about what awful crimes can be committed in these isolated locations, whilst in crowded urban areas, someone was bound to hear a cry or notice someone missing.

The latter in my office was in reference to anecdotes versus statistics.

 

[cirdan]

Looking in a guide, Watson observes "We're in luck, Holmes, it is only a five-mile walk from the station to the manor house." With a coverage like that, huge swaths of late 19th - early 20th Century industrial areas could be considered to have service.

This is pretty accurate. I think at the peak of its development, Britain had a rail network on which, with the exception of the far north of Scotland and some other sparsely populated regions, there was no location in all of Britain further than something like 16 miles from the nearest railway station.

Train schedules were not as intensive as they are today (some commuter routes aside) but on a main line you would rarely have had to wait for more than an hour or two to catch the next train. The main arteries into London would have been busier than that of course, whereas even rural branch lines would have had a train three to five times a day. Today's schedules are more built around corridors with most trains on that line serving exactly the same route and the same stations, often in a clock-face timetable. In those days there would have been more variation, with differing stopping patterns and more trains weaving off one route and onto another, so many more city pairs would have had direct connections, albeit more sporadically. There were also many more accelerated trains between major cities with very few or no intermediate stops, while using high-quality rolling stock expressing the pride of the company. Such tight schedules could only be maintained by granting such trains high priority levels over anything else. This would be impossible today on account of the network being much busier.

When Beeching closed the branch lines, many were replaced by bus services, often following the same approximate routes and schedules. Over time these were allowed to degrade and today's levels of service are well below what there was initially.

 

[Palmland]

Since this thread has migrated across the Atlantic, I thought it appropriate to mention another classic compiler of timetables. On my first trip to Europe, 1968, I was armed with a Eurailpass and the Cooks Continental Timetable was my bible. I guess that period was analogous to the U.S. streamliner era. The shot below shows a few of the famous trains then. I was glad to see on a 2017 trip the defunct Cooks schedules had been resurrected by another group. I doubt if its still around as most just use the Man in Seat 61 for planning purposes or the country's rail website. For me, it's not nearly as satisfying as exploring a printed document (perhaps I'm becoming a curmudgeon).

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

When Beeching closed the branch lines, many were replaced by bus services, often following the same approximate routes and schedules. Over time these were allowed to degrade and today's levels of service are well below what there was initially

Although some of those branch lines closed by Dr. Beeching have been reopened in recent years in locations where an increasing population has made train service viable again.

 

[cirdan]

Although some of those branch lines closed by Dr. Beeching have been reopened in recent years in locations where an increasing population has made train service viable again.

Some have returned, but very few unfortunately. Many more have become heritage railways. At least one (in Nottingham) is now a light rail line. Some have also become cycling and walking trails.

Many others lines have been lost. Some have had roads built over them. Others have been split up piecemeal and have been built on to the point that you can't even follow them on google maps any more. Interestingly, after the Beeching plan much of the disused ROW remained in the hands of the British Rail Board. It was not until the 1980s that British Rail started to dress their balance sheet by selling off what was considered surplus land, while pretending this was taking them to some form of sustainable profitability.

There is quite a long list of lines that would probably make sense if they were re-opened, but the costs would be prohibitive due to bits of the line being lost to construction.

 

[jis]

India has a remarkable number of long distance trains from the 19th century and early 20th century operating on their original routing except for truncation or rerouting at the border with Pakistan. Some have had their name changed. Some well known examples are:

• Netaji Express - Howrah - Delhi - Kalka connecting to the Shimla Narrow Gauge Line at Kalka. Originally the first direct train between Howrah and Delhi ,called Howrah Delhi Kalka Mail (both @caravanman and I have ridden it, I several times.
• Golden Temple Mail - Mumbai Central - New Delhi - Amritsar. Originally called Frontier Mail, used to run to the Northwest Frontier of British India at Peshawar, now in the Pakistan province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, gateway to the Khyber Pass.
• Amritsar Mail - Howrah - Amritsar, used to run beyond Amritsar before partition to Lahore and thence in various combinations all the way to Peshawar, and is still colloquially called Punjab Mail.
• Punjab Mail - Mumbai CSMT - New Delhi - Ferozepur. Originally started as Northern Express and used to run all the way to Peshawar before partition combined with other trains beyond Lahore.
• Mumbai Mail via Prayagraj/Cheoki - Howrah - Cheoki - Mumbai CSMT. Originally the first direct train between Howrah and Mumbai called Bombay Mail via Allahabad, before it go moved to the Cheoki Chord and Allahabad changed its name to Prayagraj.
• Mumbai Mail via Nagour - Howrah to Mumbai CSMT via Nagpur, pretty much remains exactly the same route.
• Chennai Mail via Vishakhapatnam - Howrah to Chennai Central. Pretty much the same except originally it was Madras Mail via Waltair. City name changed since then Madras changed to Chennai and Waltair changed to Vhishakhapatnam.
• Grand Trunk Express - New Delhi - Chennai via Nagpur. Pretty much the same route except now it bypasses Wardha.

Then there is at least one well known train which operates essentially between the same end point cities, though different station at one end, but on a different route due to partition

• Darjeeling Mail between Sealdah (Kolkata) and New Jalpaiguri connection to the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Originally operated through Bangladesh terminating in Siliguri a few miles from the current terminal. Now it runs through India crossing Ganga over Farakka Barrage. Originally it crossed the Ganga (Padma) over Hardinge Bridge now in Bangladesh, The current route did not exist at all before partition.

In Pakistan there is

• Khyber Mail - Karachi Cantt. - Lahore - Rawalpindi - Peshawar. Runs pretty much the same route today
• Bolan Mail - Karachi Cantt. - Rohri - Quetta near Afghanistan border at Chaman (Spin Boldak). Runs pretty much the same route today.

There are many others in India, and perhaps a few others in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Oh and there is at least one international train:

• Bandhan Express - Kolkata International - Benapole/Petrapole border - Khulna. Originally East Bengal Express (Sealdah - Khulna)

 

[caravanman]

I have taken the Grand Trunk Express from Delhi to Chennai, although sadly, it was the one train in India that I had items stolen while I slept.
I so liked the train name, I chose it over the faster Tamil Nadu Express on a similar route.
Certainly I enjoyed very many other long rides too, but I guess my Rajdhani from Trivandrum to Delhi won't be in old timetables, as the Konkan Railway was only fully opened in the 1990's.