One of my favorite overnight trains was the “Northland” between Toronto and Kapuskasing, Ont. Since there were cars for four destinations the lineup from front to rear out of Toronto might look like this:
Engine(s), Baggage, Kapuskasing Sleeper. Kapuskasing coach, Cochrane food service/lounge, Cochrane coach (when req’d), Timmins coach, Timmins Sleeper, Noranda sleeper. Cars would be dropped from the rear of the train until only 3 cars made it to the final destination.
The Kap sleeper would be first behind the baggage so coach passengers would not have to pass through on the way to the lounge. So if your train is going from A to B with no changes, the “Normal” configurtion would apply but if cars are to be dropped enroute, asemble the train for ease of handling on the road. When AMTRAK was handling mail and express those cars were often on the rear as they did not have power cables to heat following cars.
I remember UP passengers going east up Weber Canyon in to Echo around 10 Am and west about 6 PM. The City of Los Angeles followed by the Challenger then the city of San Francisco. This was in the summer I do not remember what the winter schedule was as we did not live by the tracks but the farm was. I know in the summer the City of LA and Challenger were separate trains a few minutes apart coming from LA thru Vegas,S.L.C. to Ogden where the City of SF came across the Great Salt Lake on SP tracks. Leaving Ogden it followed the Challenger. Just west of Green River at Granger WY the City of Portland fell in behind the City of SF after it came off the Oregon Short Line. Behind them came a series of Pacific Fruit Express trains in the shipping season. I understand during the off season they did combine trains. I was in school then so I have little from memory about seeing them in the winter and all the old guys are gone now. This link may give you some ideas http://www.streamlinerschedules.com/concourse/track5/cityla195607.html This is the Milwaukee UP Official Guide, July 1956 and gives the NYC and PA connection schedule too. LA to Chicago 40 hrs 45 min speed 56.4 MPH Chicago to LA 40 hrs 30 min 56.8 MPH During the late end of steam the City of LA and Challenger had Challengers (4-6-6-4) coming out of LA instead of the FFE (4-8-4) due to the grade.
Gerhard I took the train from Mamonovo, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia to Gdansk Poland in Nov. 09 What an experince. One woman in the Polish passport spoke English. No other person on the trip did. I had a good conversation with a Russian traveling to Copenhagen and Oslo. I didn’t speak enough Russian or him English to really communicate but we used my Lingo translator. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If I go back I will Stop at my uncles grave at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium. Then take the train to Kaliningrad.
two cents worth - the Empire Builder equipment is through-routed with thr City of New Orleans, so when the trainset is made up in Nawlins it’s pre-sorted for the spokane split several days duwn the pike. it goes baggage-portland sleeper-portland coach-portland lounge/snack bar-seattle coach-seattle coach-seattle diner-seattle sleeper-seattle sleeper-baggage;. at least that’s the off-peak setup i saw when i rode it both ways last october. i only went as far east as havre, but i believe they add a coach between minneapolis and centralia IL. the rock island’s colorado rocket did the same kind of thing at limon CO for its denver and colo, springs sections; but the springs section was powered by a single B-unit! -big duke
They’re not short… In the UK up to 2001 the standard dwell time for any stop was 20 seconds unless the working timetable (WTT) showed seperate arrival and departure times. Seperate times would rarely be more than 2 minutes and hardly, if ever, as much as five except where attachments/detachments were booked.
In Commuter teritory this was fine while everything was slam-door stock with a door between each facing pair of seats. Train pulled in, doors opened, bodies tumbled out, bodies climbed in, doors slammed and train left. Easy. When they went to sliding door stock with two wide doors each side and three blocks of seats they said that the wider doors would allow for quicker loading/unloading.
What they didn’t figure on was “shuffle time” with people having to move around inside while the train was moving if they were to have a hope of being at the door space when the train stopped. People also didn’t want to “move down inside the car” if they were only going a few stops; so they bunged up the door area. What a mess! People soon learnt how to trip the doors’ safety mechanisms so that they stayed open long enough for people to do what they needed to do. Result was completely over-ridden dwell times.
You think they would adjust the schedule? Can’t do that! This all occurred around the time of Privatisation and the new franchises were legally bound to maintain the same schedules. So for about six years up till I left in 2001 they were getting round to negotiating longer dwell times. This is what happens when you let the politicians stick their beaks in.
On the practical side the new trains had better acceleration and braking so that, at least off peak, they could dwell longer, then accelerate like mad to a higher speed and then brake harder to reach t
Just recalled. When I was still playing with passenger services I kept a photo in my office of an Amtrak train crossing the diamond at Big Sandy, Texas 19 hours late. It had slowed for my friend John’s wife to hand a cherry pie to the conductor. I just loved that! [(-D] Nearly a day late and slowing for the important things. [^]
A different important thing. About 1981 I was working the Brighton Main when snow and ice closed the Quarry Line and everything was creeping signal to signal down the main. I’d guess that average speed for thousands of homebound commuters was about 5mph. One train stopped outside my signalbox (tower) and the guard asked for boiling water… we made up a baby’s feed before the train moved on. Didn’t hold the train much longer but saved a lot of people having to put up with the poor kid’s crying.
On the other hand… When I moved where I am now the local bus franchise brought in a new schedule, electronic tagging and new pay codes. Bus drivers had to hit target times at stops or lose all their bonuses. Much of the new pay was bonuses. The schedules were worked out for clear Sunday roads not even off peak weekdays. The scheme lasted half a day. There was nothing in the scheme that said that the drivers had to stop to pick up passenegers as they hurtled round making their time checks on time… That pea brained masterpiece made the national news. [^]
The RPO would be the first occupied car, or the last. This is because the doors must be locked at all times. observation is the last car. Well the read ran a train of about five cars with an observation car on each end so they could just turn the locomtive and put iot on the other end. They did not have any head end cars. The Santa fe ran a train from Kansas City to tulsa Ok. About 1950 they stoped turning the train in Tulsa and just put the locomotive on the other end (observation car) and went back to KC with the head end cars on the end.
C&O dod something like that with the Pere Marquette trains. They had Mail/Bagage, then two coach/lounges, a diner, then two more coach lounges. The lounges were oriented back to back, with the lagest windows facing toward the ends of the passenger section for the #1 and #4 cars, and from what I understand, the inside cars had the picture winders facing the Diner. They did turn the engine(s), and the baggages, but the lounge/coaches could get away without needing it, AND be turned about if the end observation was defective without a lot of pain, and only needing a passing track
The Rock Island’s Rocky Mountain Rocket did this at Limon, Colorado. The train out of Chicago split into a Denver section and a Colorado Springs section, about half the train going to each destination. This was the train the RI bought those AB-6 engines for. (At one time, there was a Kansas City section that was cut into/out of the train at Belleville, Kansas.)
Kalmbach’s How to Operate your model railroad by Bruce Chubb had a diagram (and photos) of the moves made at Limon of the two eastward trains combining into one for Chicago.