Reading about the Golden Age we see things like “The Century ran in five sections that night.” So how did the NYC or PRR or ATSF or whoever accomplish that from an equipment standpoint…OK, you’ve got one section made up of the post-WWII equipment, do you then pull the pre-war equipment from wherever it is assigned (obviously you need aa few spare cars in case of problems, but I can’t believe any railroad would allow entire trainsets to sit idle on standby - not when you are still paying off the 15 year equipment trust) What about the other sections - do you play, “you’ve been bumped” down to the lowliest, makes every stop, overnighter. At what point does the passenger department say, “Sorry, we’re full tonight” or was really that huge a pool at Pullman or wherever to cover traffic surges like that.
Short answer, yes there WAS a huge pool of unassigned equipment (and porters, cooks, Pullman conductors, waiters, etc.) that could be called upon for surges in traffic.
Add to that the fact that there were “Advance” trains as well (Advance Twentieth Century, Commodore Vanderbilt, etc.) These could also run in multiple sections.
The sections generally ran on five or six minute lead times ahead of the scheduled train. During periods of high holiday traffic or special events there certainly was a constant parade of passenger trains.
Both Lucius Beebe and Edward Hungerford attested that the service and attention to detail offered on any of the sections were on par with what was expected of the service on the actual Century or Commodore.
Century_Advance by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
There is a picture in the Ball and Frimbo book on the decade of the '40s that shows how the Burlington did this with one of the Zephyrs – I will have to go back and see which one it was. The ‘original’ section was the streamlined shovelnose consist; I believe the second section was heavyweights pulled by a steam engine.
On the NYC the sections ran as close to the first one’s time as possible; there are a number of accounts that say not only that you could clearly see the headlight of the following section, but that you could make out the plume of steam from the turbogenerator or perhaps even the feedwater heater vent (!) Presumably the railroad would invest in enough car capacity to run what was essentially a long single train with ‘distributed power’, or contract with Pullman to provide overflow capability for heavier demand periods ‘at the necessary level of equipment quality’. As I recall the Hungerford book ‘Run of the Twentieth Century’ contains information on how the sections were made up and operated.
The railroad that comes to mind having ridiculous overcapacity in ‘special’ equipment was C&O with the enormous order for the Chessie in the late 1940s, much of which got distributed all over the place when the amazing race for trains to Cincinnati failed to thrive.
One has to remember that railroads run trains for a living. They have been doing this for years. After about 20 years of having lots of passengers on peak periods they kinda notice a trend that at certain times of the year and on certain services, they have more demand than other times of the year and other services. So they adjust their service on the in demand lanes accordingly.
They know that around Christmas the demand for the Broadway Limited schedule will be 1000 seats so they plan on having 3 or 4 sections of that schedule. They plan on having the equipment there, they plan on having the all the porters and trains crews, they plan on having the engines there. Its not something they just jump up and decide to do at the last minute. They anticipate that they will need more equipment weeks or months in advance.
Um, not quite.
“Running sections” means running multiple trains on the same schedule. NONE of the sections can run before the times printed in the timetable.
Sections are not running “ahead of” the scheduled train… the first section IS the “scheduled train”, with each additional section running behind the one before it. So the first section will be running around the published times at the absolute possible earliest, and the last section will be running somewhat behind the published times.
Basically ALL of the sections are “the scheduled train”. That’s kind of the point. Any opposing trains that would have to wait for no. 10 would have to wait for ALL of the sections of no. 10 unless explicitly instructed otherwise by train order.
“Advance” sections of a scheduled train are not a “thing” under operating rules - these would be run as an extra or a different schedule. The Passenger Marketing Department may brand it as the “Advance ____” but for operating crews it’s “Passenger Extra 1234” or “No. 12” (schedules and timetables don’t list train “names” anyway, only schedule numbers).
While the sections may not be “scheduled” on the printed timetable, they’re definitely “scheduled” in terms of arranging for equipment and crews to be available in the right place, which would have to be done well in advance. They probably planned those five sections weeks ago, and if they all sell out, they sell out.
That’s not generally going to be how sections work - if one is a limited stop afternoon coach train, and the other is an all stops overnight train, they’re NOT going to be sharing a schedule, that’s two completely different trains.
Sections are all the SAME train* with the SAME schedule and superiority.
*Note that actually running sections and extras is an operating tool which can be used with a certain amount of flexibility by the dispatcher. Pretty much any train can be run on any printed schedule as necessary - I’ve heard of priority fast freights being run as a second sections to a passenger schedules, etc. But the above situation of having two very different classes of passenger service would definitely be scheduled as two different trains.
And to really answer that question about getting bumped, I wouldn’t imagine it’s that complicated… “I’m sorry but no. 10 is completely sold out for that day’s departure. There’s another train in the evening that has seats available, or would you like to look at the next day for no. 10?”
And that happened.
The most recent issue of the Reading Co Tech and Hist Soc. Bee Line had excepts of articles from a Harrisburg newspaper about the RDG and in the 1919 issue there weas an article about complaints due to severe over crowding and passengers having SRO on certain trains and the railroad projecting the condions would continue for a while, since the cause was attributed to increased demand from solidiers returning from WW1.
I think part of the problem for folks born and raised in the Amtrak era is that it’s hard to fathom how many trains there used to be. The OP mentioned New York Central - on a typical day c.1941 the New York Central System had a couple hundred passenger trains running. The Central didn’t have a train set plus a train set in reserve for each train, it had hundreds (thousands?) of passenger cars at their disposal.
At that time the number of people sleeping in Pullman cars on the NYC alone were enough to fill a large New York City hotel.
Plus they might not all be the same train as far as accomodations, they would load the longer distance passengers on the first sections and the shorter distance passengers on the following sections then terminate following sections at intermediate points. Cleveland and beyond passengers on the first section, up to Cleveland on the second, up to Buffalo on the third, up to Albany on the 4th. The Albany and Buffalo sections might not have or need sleepers.
Good point, I know when the heavyweight Empire Builder ran in sections Great Northern would sometimes have one section of just the coaches, with another section just the Pullmans.
Both those are things I never realized. In fact I think I just tacitly assumed everyone riding that particular train was going through reasonably far to Chicago: it was Pullman-only, so little point leaving in the afternoon to get to Albany just before the hour you’d go to bed, or pay extra fare to get off in the middle of the night at Cleveland or Toledo when other trains would get you there in daylight or go more directly to, say, Detroit.
While it would not have occurred to me that anyone would take a Pullman to Albany, I seem to remember reports of people like Beebe who would ride just to have dinner and cocktails on the train. A whole section of such passengers, even before the Depression, seems unlikely to me.
Something else I did not know was how short a time the ‘Advance’ trains left before the main first section – in essence constituting a ‘first section’ that would run limited stops and detrain-only to stay ahead of anything immediately following as well as get into the terminal city as soon as possible.
An additional question involved how many tracks needed to be used by sections at the stops – potentially no more than three if the sections run a nominal 5" apart and dwell time in station is also under 5".
Were Pullmans taken out of any Century sections, at Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo or elsewhere, to be put on other trains or ‘held’ until morning? I wouldn’t have thought so.
That’s easy. “Advance” sections of that schedule can leave exactly zero minutes ahead of the regular schedule.
If the “Advance section” leaves before the schedule of the regular schedule then its not a “section” its its own or a completely different schedule, not a section.
If you operate a train with limited stops (i.e. stops at some places and not at others) then you have to operate both trains all the way. If you run an all Pullman section and an all coach section then you would have to run both trains all the way, the Pullman trains would only have to make stops where they sold Pullman accomodations from and the coach train would have to make all scheduled stops. The Pullman train would run on time and the coach train would run late, behind it.
They also might not take up any more track space. They could operate serially, using the same track. The first section would be on time and the following sections would all operate late by whatever the spacing was between the trains. If the trains were operating on 15 minute headways and the first section was on time, then the 5th section woud be essentially running an hour late. There is NO WAY any of the sections can depart ahead of time and NO WAY all the sections can be on time.
If you want details on how the 20th Century operated I would suggest contacting the NYC historical society. I’m sure they could give you lots of information on how they did it. They probably did it different ways at a different times. My comments are more of a general sense and not anything specifi
Like was said earlier, you don’t. That’s not allowed under the rules. You can’t run early ahead of the scheduled time. Period. “Advance sections” are a marketing thing, not operational. In order to run an “advance” section before the scheduled time of the main train you have to run a completely different schedule or an extra. Not a section of the same schedule.
You’d think that a train like the ‘Advance Commodore Vanderbilt’ with its own signage and I believe its own timetable listing would not be interpreted as if it were the same thing as the ‘secret quicker first section’ of the main Commodore Vanderbilt, which is only divided into sections because it would be inconvenient to run the thing as one whole train even with only ‘convenience’ stops (at Harmon to change power, and I think Englewood). Certainly for an ‘advance’ train to make any sense it would have to be faster than ‘the rest’ of the divided consist. Of course, perhaps it was only marketing and we are so stupid as not to know the difference.
I don’t follow the point you’re making.
Please understand that “Commodore Vanderbilt” is a marketing name for the train. You won’t see that designation in the operating schedule in the employee’s timetable. Operating schedules in the timetable are listed by schedule numbers. Since I’m not totally familiar with the particular RR’s timetable, lets say “Commodore Vanderbilt” runs as no. 10.
The “Advance Commodore Vanderbilt” cannot run as “advance” sections of no. 10 because that’s not how timetable/train order rules and practices work. It might be listed as a se
Look at the edited version of my post, it is probably clearer.
I had always thought, or assumed, that the 'Advance Commodore Vanderbilt was its own train, with distinct number and operating rights. I did not look specifically at the “Advance Twentieth Century” to see if it was set up that way or (reading between the lines in that strange Wikipedia article) actually operating as the ‘first section’ with the rest of the times implicitly pushed back (as you noted, probably for marketing reasons if so).
ISTR that one of the points of the Advance Commodore Vanderbilt was that its Pullman ride was said to be rougher in some ways due to higher speed. That to me automatically indicates it was being dispatched as a separate train and not a first section operating in advance of the “train’s” schedule – which I agree would be a no-no.
A possible partial resolution of this us to look at the arrival times of the Advance and regular Commodores. If the Advance was a faster train leaving “only 5 minutes ahead” we would expect it to stay progressively ahead of the ‘train of sections’ and arrive in Chicago perhaps far more than just the five minutes earlier…
Some railroads DID list train names in their employee time tables. Usually the premier trains.
http://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/1_habegger/1958-04-27AT%26SF_Illinois6-JonHabegger.pdf
http://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/1_habegger/1961-04-16D%26RGW_Utah_1-Webber-Habegger.pdf
http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/maps/perryETT/1963-10-27SP_Coast186-SheldonPerry.pdf
http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/maps/zukasETT/1949-09-25CRI%26P_DesMoinesDiv-1stDist_2-TimZukas.pdf
And apparently, the NYC did too.
http://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/1_habegger/1947-09-28NYC_Illinois26-Jon%20Habegger.pdf
All the links above are from this site. http://wx4.org/to/foam/a_rrcontents.html[](http://wx4.org/arrivals/new.html)
Why would that make sense?
It would use the same engines and cars and runs on the same track, so the operating speed would be the same. The only way it would be faster is if it made fewer stops (making it a “limited”.)
A train can run at the same speed as another train and remain ahead of it the whole way (in “advance”).
“Advance” doesn’t imply faster, it implies “earlier”.
Doing some more poking around, I found some other NYC etts.
The Advance Commodore Vanderbilt had it’s own schedule. No. 65 for the Advance CV, No. 67 for the CV. You have to scroll down to the ett’s page 18.
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/ett/images/mohawk-tt-0446.pdf
Jeff
Ok, that’s cool. It’s a nice extra bit of informational data. Most of the Canadian railways didn’t include that extra line to note train names, as there were far fewer “named” trains. My own modeling is a slightly later time frame as well, so I’m usually looking at 1970s-80s timetables.