Over the years I’ve managed to save probably a 100+ speed logs. These came from various sources although primarily British.
Trains magazine did have about a dozen over the decades that I’ve found through the archives. And Railroad Stories ran 8 articles just before WW2 called Timing The Fast Ones. But Britain’s Railway Magazine (comparable to our Trains for primarily rail enthusiasts) has had a continuous monthly column called Practice and Performance. The Brits have a real passion for timing trains. I have logs dating from the 1840s.
Cecil Allen ran the Railway Magazine column from about 1910 to 1960. He also occassionally published logs in Railway Gazette (comparable to our Railway Age for the rail industry). The above log was in their Diesel Traction Supplement. He also published a book of the best of his runs from his columns. Here is a PDF link if you’re interested. Although British focused these columns have a fair number of logs from all over the world.
For the first of what I hope to be a series of posts on this forum I chose the speed competition of what were typically the fastest trains in America and the US in the 1940s, the Milwaukee Hiawatha and the Burlington Zephyr on the Chicago Minneapolis St Paul corridor. Sorry I don’t have one for the CNW 400.
FYI if Table II looks different it’s because Allen did not show the mph for that table. I scanned it into Excel and calculated the speeds and repasted it into the article. Allen must have had to calc the other tables by long hand division and decided against spending the 3 hours to do Table II.
I hope you find this article interesting. If anyone has a particular train in interest let me know.
If I have a speed log I’ll gladly post it in a future topic.
I’ve always like Allen and his writing – some of the best of the British tradition.
You’ll probably note a marked reduction in that 100mph running fairly shortly after 1947 – that was the year of the Naperville wreck and ICC re-imposition of train control requirements for high speed.
I’ve always thought not, although I have read a number of authors who think that massive passenger decline would have become inevitable only a few years later even if the high speed facilitation (for example the 140mph+ capable Ingalls unit or the PRR high-speed turbine or one of the free-piston engine approaches) had been continued.
I thought stories of 127mph trains on single track signaled only by semaphores would be dicey at best with any substantial freight traffic, no matter how fast the freights might be (think how Seaboard used its R-2s and then Centipedes). We might have seen air-crash levels of catastrophe, far beyond what happened at Naperville.
Milwaukee also had directional running on their Twin Cities mainline even with the modern CTC they very rarely used the crossovers between tracks unless they had to and even when they did it was considered running on the wrong track and they switched back over to the proper directional main. They used sidings off each directional mainline for passing for the most part versus crossing over and running against the flow of traffic. All that track is gone now but the operation was different back then and they would shift the frieghts off the mainline onto the directional siding on either side before the passenger train would pass.
Brookfield Road at Brookfield Depot used to have four tracks, it was down to three when I was a kid but you could still see the evidence of the fourth when I was a kid. Because Brookfield used to be a junction a long time ago. So each directional mainline had a very long siding at the Brookfield Depot in WIsconsin.
Back in the 1930’s the Milwaukee still had remnant sidings and branches in place to gather ice from lakes or take shortcuts. Used to be a branch from the Eagle, Wisconsin Branch line to the Southwestern Branch line to KC. So you could take a train from Waukesha to KC without ever having to go via Milwaukee but you would have to change trains. FB page about people recalling the turn of the century era in Milwaukee and taking passenger trains from Milwaukee to Sussex, WI or Milwaukee to Ripon, WI…Most of those trains were gone by the time my Father was a kid. Interesting though you could once upon a time take a train or interurban from Milwaukee to just about any suburb.
As long as I am drifting way off topic and down memory lane here. Remember the TV Series “Little House on the Prarie”? Caroline Ingalls (the wifey) lived in Brookfield for a time 2 miles from the Depot, there is a historical marker. Brookfield bulldozed the former home and plopped in a subdivision but the historical marker was still there last Summer. She lived there before she met Charles.
Directional running was a function of Current of Traffic one way signaling. The main track were supplemented with directional passing sidings - in operation slower or freight trains were put in the directional siding to be passed by the faster train. Yes, having trains operate against the current of traffic was the last resort of the Train Dispatcher. Operating against the current of traffic was without signal indication and freight trains are restricted to 49 MPH and passenger trains to 59 MPH when operating without signals.
The C&O with passing sidings in current of traffic signaled multiple track territory like to use Center Sidings, that could be used by trains in either direction as necessary.
The ‘Plant Rationalization’ movement of the 1980’s removed most directional sidings and installed bi-directional signaling and CTC where multiple track territory continued to exist.
I watched that happen, first thing the Soo Line did after takeover was change the signaling on Chicago to Twin Cities from search light CTC to tricolor lights and then started to lift what was left of the excess track up. I think Amtrak even complained back then but CP proved it still could keep the schedule over it’s part of the Empire Builder.
They removed most of the second mainline West of Brookfield or Duplainville (forget where it ends), Soo kept passing sidings (formerly the second main) every so many miles but I don’t know how frequent they are or the length (prior to PSR). All the directional passing sidings on either side all the way to Twin Cities were lifted and are gone now. I don’t know about the ROW of the former directional passing sidings but they kept the second main ROW for now. Some of the former ROW of C&NW or MILW are maintained as bike paths or ROW if they were abandoned post-1980 by the state or it just happened that way. Pre-1980 is gone for the most part. It is amazing but you can see the former C&NW passenger main ROW from Milwaukee lakefront station North…still exists and no encroachment because of the grade crossing avoidance grade mostly. South of Lakefront station site to the former connection to the now Amtrak Main…mostly built over now as it was at grade for the most part.
B&O in the early 1960’s installed CTC on the Akron-Chicago Division West of Sherwood, OH. What was installed was nominally 8 miles of single track, 8 miles of double track, repeat until you get to Pine Jct. and the start of the B&O CT. There were no intermediate crossovers within the 8 mile sections of double track.
When the ConRail split was acknowledged to become a reality in the last half of the 1990’s CSX undertook a program to make the entire line from Sherwood West into double track CTC, with universal crossovers at roughly 8 to 10 mile increments so the line could effectively handle the increased traffic level that would come into being with CSX’s ConRail acquisition. Adding the second track back was a serious undertaking in both time and money.
If you asked me while I was living in Wisconsin I would say noway would it happen. Now I am not so sure. The last state rail passenger service manager (now works for Amtrak) was pretty good and his replacement is even more enthusiastic. Additionally, CPKC is unusually open to proposals as long as there is money behind them and they see benefit to the freight side.
