In the transition era, how were freight trains in the Northeast (NYC, Reading, B&M, etc.), generally identified? My feeling is that they were ID’d by origin and destination yard symbols, not spcific city ID’s. I think there were also specialized ID’s. such as the Alpha Jets on the Alphabet Route.
Thanks to all for any info.
Symbols are purely railroad-dependent.
Many railroads’ symbols matched the schedule numbers.
Other railroads used coded alpha symbols. These systems are unique to each railroad. I don’t know when any particular railroad started using these sorts of symbol systems.
Marketing and/or unofficial names may also be given but are NOT official symbols used in any capacity by operations.
“Alpha Jet” sounds like a nickname, not a symbol.
The RDG used a 2-3 letter alpha code for the train symbol, such as AD for Allentown to Darby Creek, and WR for Wilmington, DE to Reading.
Other railroads used other codes. Some used numbers, some used alpha codes, suome used a combination of the two. It varies by railroad and can vary by time with trains added and subtracted as the traffic changed.
I was going to use the first letter of the origin city and the first letter of the destination city followed by a number indicating which train on the route each day. For example the first Buffalo-Franklinton freight symbol would be BF1. Then I saw what the second Franklinton-Utica freight symbol would be.
Both, in a sense. The Alpha Jets were symboled as AJ-x.
Conrail already used that BF-1 as part of EN-BF1, Enola to Buffalo Frontier yard.
My railroad is set in 1956 so I had it first.
How were the Apollos symboled? Were they considered part of a longer runthrough while on LV?
I don’t remember them being called anything but “Apollo 1” and “Apollo 2” (even though the ‘overflow’ traffic above 50 cars for Apollo 2 was shifted to “LV-2” going to Oak Island by late summer 1974 or so, so LV did use 2-letter abbreviations for regular fast ‘merchandise’ trains…)
Someone might confirm this, but there was said to have been an “Apollo 2X” that ran Sundays if there was enough priority TOFC that day to merit it.
For your reference if you please:
Cheers, Ed
On the UP we used two letter codes and we always wanted to run a train from Shreveport to Itasca.
The old Arlow Guthrie song lyric. “Passing trains that have no name.”
Symbol freight are not listed in timetables? I know the PRR used the lead locomotive number in some of if not all train designations in the steam era.
Pete.
There are two different schedules. A timetable schedule grants authority on the main track. A service schedule does not, the train operates as an extra train. In both cases the train may operate on a regular basis at the same time every day, on the same route, carrying the same type of traffic, but how it gets its authority to move is different.
As far back as WW1 railroads ran trains as symbol freights on service schedules as extras.
Running a train as an extra gives a railroad more flexibility on when it runs, it can run ahead or be late and it doesn’t affect anything else, and its easier to run multiple copies of the same service schedule.
The Reading Co. listed service schedules in its timetables on a separate page and noted that the schedules conveyed no authority.
Ed’s reference (as usual!) is a delight!
Be advised that there are usually at least 3 things here.
Take for example “The Whippet”, a highly interesting kind of service for a small model railroad. This had a ‘marketing name’, and the railroad supported this as far as ‘semi-streamlining’ the locomotive to carry the train name on the running boards. Presumably this connected with other railroads’ Depression-era higher-speed or expedited merchandisers to give faster end-to-end timing.
The actual ‘timetable’ indication for The Whippet was 119-19-9 (according to Ed’s reference in the early '50s) and this is how the railroad would refer to the train in communications.
Actual track authority for the train to move is yet another thing, and on the Rutland would probably have been conveyed by physical train orders. Note that this may involve ‘priority of trains’ by class or direction, but you would only factor that information into making up the train orders – which the crews would then follow and all would be well.
The Whippet was special because it ran fast freight with a 2-8-0 with inside Stephenson gear; almost any model railroad, no matter how rural, could have a comparable kind of expedited service with ‘showy’ power.
A couple things here, if it has a timtable schedule, it will run on that schedule. The “119-19-9” thing looks like there were three schedules, No 119, No 19 and No 9, each running at a different time or on different days. Note all of those trains are in the same direction (odd one way, even the other.) If its run on the schedule it doesn’t need train orders unless you want to change something or its running really late.
Superiority is TT&TO thing, priority is a management thing. Only the timetable can grant superiority by class or direction, but trains can be prioritized above the timetable schedule by “right” using train orders.
Which pretty much says to me that they’re running as extras. Since the locomotive assigned will change on a daily basis, you can’t list timetable schedules by locomotive number, or list train symbols in a transportation plan. Those are fixed planning documents, so the schedule/symbol needs to be a fixed/“permanent” number or code that don’t change every day.
The engine #, schedule #, and symbol # are all different things.
Train orders will be addressed to schedule #s or engine #s, not the symbol.
Later on track warrants are generally addressed to lead engine #s, not the symbol #. (Or possibly both depending on how the rr is doing things, but will definitely include the engine number e.g. “train BF-1, engine 1234”) The schedule # no longer exists, because that’s specific to timetable operation.
“Designation” is probably a really bad word to even use in this discusssion, as it doesn’t have any sort of clear meaning. One person might mean “symbol” or “name” or “schedule” or “what the train order is addressed to”…
I agree with you but there are some exceptions that can confuse people. For example, some rules required regular trains to be identified by engine number too, as in “No 235 Eng 3985”. There are cases where the railroad used numbers for its symbols, so the schedule number and the symbol were the same. And in the never say never dept., the MP ran the FF1 (Fast Ford auto parts train) as a first class train on a first class schedule as the “FF1” in the timetable. It was the only scheduled train on the subdivisions.
Other than exceptions like that, what Chris described is the most common way it was handled.
Were railroads using letter codes in 1956? I thought railroads pretty much all used train numbers until the 1960’s?
Canadian railways used numeric symbols, so the schedule and symbols are (usually) the same… however you can very well run one symbol on a different train’s schedule, so it’s still important to distinguish. You could run 949 on 951’s schedule, so while the symbol might be 949, the orders would be to 951 because that’s the schedule that’s running.
You could check out this website it contains NYC timetables and schedules.
https://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/nyc-freight-schedules.htm
Dispatchers could run any train on any ETT schedule handy. They might do it because the symbol matching the schedule might be too early or late to use it. Meanwhile, another train could use it rather than annul it, saving some work on fixing up protection for an extra. Here’s an example from a Rock Island train dispatcher’s train sheet.
crip-fourth-ninth-tenth-sub-10-25-1975.jpg (26592×5553) (wordpress.com)
It shows 3 subdivisions: 4th, 9th and 10th. The 4th was double track on the east end, some CTC on the west, the rest TT&TO. The 9th and 10th were all TT&TO.
On subdivision 4 the schedules appearing in the ETT was 55, 57 and 59 westbound. Eastbound was 56 and 44.
On this day, symbol 43X25 (the X means a connection was missed) was run on 55’s schedule. There was no 55 symbol train ran that day. Symbol 44A24 was run on 56’s schedule. 56A23 ran as an extra. 44A25 also ran as an extra that day and the dispatcher annulled 44’s schedule that day.
On the 9th and
