Am rereading for at least the 5th time, Louis Grogan’s The Coming of the New York and Harlem Railroad. It is stated that MP’s are measured from the north curb of 42nd St and not from the bumper blocks for the NY and Harlem and NYC. I know the PRR’s MP began at the Manhattan ferry slips and not at the bumper blocks at Exchange Place, Jersey City. So, I ask, other than these two terminals and other than division and regional restarting of MP’s, were there any other roads who maintained MP 0.00 at other than bumper block at end of track?
The SP set its 0.0 mile post in San Francisco. I am puzzled at the mile posts in Oakland. As you go north from the Jack London Square station, you go in as far as MP 4.2, at 10th Street–and then you are going out from MP 2.2
I trust that there were bumper blocks on the mole.
I am not positive, but I believe that the Western Pacific also had its zero mile post in San Francisco.
What about the Erie and the Lackawanna; were their zero mile posts in Manhattan?
Lackawanna, Erie, CNJ and West Shore were all zero at the bumper block.
MP0.0 on the former Utica & Black River (now Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern) is in the middle of the yard at Utica. Without doing some research into where the track may have moved at any point, I can’t say that its current location is the same as Day 1.
That’s about MP237 on the NYC.
The MP Kingsville Division 0.00 was in Brownsville, TX and there was no bumper, the line went south into Mexico.
Yeah, the 1990s realignment confused things. As you go west thru downtown Oakland the mileposts are still from the Ferry Bldg in SF, but with the main line continuous around to 16th St there’s now no natural point to make the switch to Overland mileposts. And UP subtracted three miles from Overland mileposts west of Martinez, so they’re now continuous thru Martinez, unlike SP days.
For the IC in Chicago, was the 0.0 at Randolph St. (the end of the line for commuters) I assume, or maybe at Central Station (used by long distance trains) at 12th Street, about 1.5 miles south?
From IC & ICG ETT’s, Mile 0.00 is at Randolph Street. There is a difference of 1.4 miles between the distance at Kankakee as shown in public timetables and the ETT’s. Public: 54.5 miles, ETT: 55.9 miles, indicates that it was approximately 1.4 miles from Randolph Street to Central Station…
ICG Northern Division TT #5 (10/28/84) shows South Wye Jct. (junction with St. Charles Air Line) at mp 2.2 on the Chicago District–and mp 1.2 on the Freeport District.
That sounds about right. The IC Electric and South Shore had a station at Roosevelt Rd (12th Street) adjacent to Central Station. Roosevelt Rd is one mile south of Madison (baseline street) and Randolph Street is about two blocks north of Madison although the bumper posts for the IC platforms onceextended to South Water Street.
So who has been to more then one?
In Chicago’s grid, it is 8 full blocks to the mile. 800 (street numbers) = one mile. North Ave (1600 N) is 2 miles north of Madison (000). 12th St. is therefore 1.5 miles south of Madison.
As a rule, Chicago’s grid is 8 blocks (800) to the mile. There is a slight variation south of Madison. Roosevelt Rd (1200 S) is the first mile, Cermak Rd (2200 S) is the second mile and 31st St (3100 S) is the third mile.
Don’t forget this import of this excellent essay - which questioned assertions of hyper-precise distances ridden into stations, etc. - on the basis of which car was being ridden and where it stopped with respect to the bumper, the various routings through interlockings and inside vs. outside of curves, etc., etc. (and also recognized the accuracy of surveyed distances and elevations):
“Selected railroad reading: Numbers - accuracy beyond the decimal point”
by LeMassena, Robert A., from Trains, July 1982, p. 44
- Paul North.
(1) BNSF created a MP 0 at Denver in 1998 at 20th Street and remileposted the joint-line between Denver and Pueblo from ATSF numbers to something resembling the abandoned C&S/D&NO line abandoned between 1903 and 1937 in stages. (Created a milepost equation with CB&Q era MP’s to do this)
(2) Also in 1998, UP created a new milepost MP-0 at Grand Junction, CO for the North Fork branch, a remnant of the old DRGW narrow gage system.
Simplifying numbers for the math challenged operating bubbas* solves one problem, but creates havoc on the recordkeeping side of the fence that deals with maintenance and the actual property.
The milepost on the ground may vary by a few feet or thousands of feet as I discovered this week. (One series of PRR/PC/CR/NS mileposts in Delaware are all off by thousands of feet (not all in the same direction btw) from the “true” MP location shown on the map. (Lots of bad guessing after years of operation of Mr. Jordan’s Spreaders and ballast regulators knocking down the visual queues?)
(*) they didn’t like subtracting and adding 3-digit numbers and counting backwards compared to the rest of the district. Corned-fusion reigned for years, especially with people new to the territory.
Originally the MP’s preciseness was important to surveys, taxes, deeds, location of trains and identifying physical characteristics: automatic block signals, for instance, were (are) identified to the precise 100th of a mile adjusted for westbound/northbound (odd number) and eastbound/southbound (even number). As tracks are realigned, routes changed by merger or abandonment or whatever, mile markers and designations usually stayed in place. I understand that today this is no longer true in many cases. However…Corridor to D.C. PRR to Pittsburg, PA still marked from MP 1 at Exchange Pl., Jersey City with the line from Penn Station being a separate branch to where Hudson Tower used to be. Lots of that all over the map.
BNSF created a new MP 0.0 in Denver at 20th Street. The math challenged BN bubbas wasted no time after the merger converting the ATSF mileposts running the wrong way to match their C&S/D&NO mileposts* south of Denver. They just added a new wrinkle to the confusion on the Joint Line and a little ambiguity to the common sections. (you really need a detailed scorecard now)
- The C&S line south of Denver to Pueblo was abandoned in sections from 1903-1937 and was never a serious threat to ATSF or DRGW in its short life. It was in sad shape when CB&Q assumed majority control in 1908.
Jersey City mileposts end at Zoo or Arsenal or someplace. Mileposts west and south from Philadelphia are from zero at Philadelphia.
I have heard of lots of cases where track reconstruction has resulted in miles that are shorter and longer than an actual mile, due to curve straightening, etc. MC, how common is this?
Northwest - Very common…rare to see an exact 5280.0 ft / 80.00 chain mile for a host of reasons. (railroad track charts tend to call out the really obvious short and long miles)
An awful lot of those old surveyors and engineers did incredibly well with the instruments of the time, then again there are others that left a lot to be desired and are treated with suspicion when we start following in their footsteps (human equation0.
Northwest, it happens a lot and is duly noted by the railroad in their bulletins, timetables, and rule books. But most important, whether short or long, whether altered or not, whatever the MP mark, it is the rule of that point whether it is a foot off or a mile off: it is the law of the landscape.