Passenger Routing from Ithaca NY to Lincoln Nebraska 1960?
Posted by S-Bahn on Sunday, January 8, 2023 4:41 PM
I met a nice little old lady at Episcopal Church in Albany who said that She rode the Lehigh Valley back and forth to Cornell U in 1960 from Ithaca. She does not remember changing trains in Buffalo so would there have been a thru passenger car on the Lehigh Valley that went all the way to Chicago at the time perhaps via the Nickle Plate? She said that she did catch the LV train in Ithaca at the Waterfront Station on Lake Cayuga which is now a bank. Wow stories Like this are rare and she said that she remembers D Day on the radio
Here is a possible routing, from my July, 1960 OG;
Lv Ithaca 306Am LV train 7 - Maple Leaf
Ar. Buffalo 555Am
Lv. Buffalo 817Am - NYC train 59 Chicagoan
Ar. Chicago Lasalle St - 445pm
Lv Chicago Union Station 10:15pm CB&Q #3 Ar-Sar-Ben
ar Lincoln 925am
NKP train 7 Westerner departed Buffalo at 530am so that would not have been a good connection. It arrived in Chicago at 4pm. So, actually the Buffalo layout of 2 hours allowed her to have a nice breakfast and stroll the grounds.
Any through Pullman from the LV to the GTW after the 1930s would have been a special movement. LV did operate (with CN) through Pullmans to Toronto from New York and Philadelphia (RDG) via Niagara Falls.
Connections at Buffalo to Chicago from LV trains required changing stations. LV’s Buffalo station was 1/4 mile from DL&W’s (used by NKP) and 2 1/2 miles from NYC’s Central Terminal, probably a taxi ride. LV and NYC both had stations in Depew, near today’s Amtrak Station, but most trains didn’t stop there. In Chicago the connection from either NYC or NKP with the CB&Q was at Union Station (6/10 mile from LaSalle).
There was a westbound connection at Hamilton ON from the Maple Leaf’s CN connecting train (93) to CN/GTW 17 the Inter-City Limited to Chicago. A parlor car ran through from Toronto to Chicago. A 7:45PM arrival (at Dearborn Station) left enough time to connect to the Ak-Sar-Ben Zephyr at Union Station, a mile away from Dearborn.
Some years ago, Trains or Classic Trains had a short article on a South Bend - Pennsylvania Station move and return for the Notre Dame football team’s South Bend - West Point (reached on the West Shore) move that had been the regular move for their semi-annual West Point game. The GTW South Bend agent even arranged the chartered buszes from Penn Station.
There were through LV/CN/GTW Pullmans between New York and Chicago at least until the late 1920s, and maybe early 1930s.
A side note to all of this is that until the mid-1950s, the Maple Leaf didn’t serve Ithaca at all, using the easier-grade freight line since it passed Ithaca in the middle of the night.
It is very sad to learn how Class 1 railroads went all out to serve the traveling public from 1920s thru the 1960s even though passenger service supposedly lost money all along