This practice is another reason why the New York Central was such a classy railroad. E.M. Frimbo remarked on the pride the NYC passenger department personnel had in their equipment and employees. Although he didn’t say so, one got the feeling that it wasn’t quite the same on the PRR.
I’m glad to report that even today, at 49.5 years for the Lake Shore Limited, the sleepers are still positioned in such a way that going up or downriver, the windows of the bedrooms almost always face the river. Someone at Amtrak is responsible for making that continue to happen and I’m grateful.
If I’m booked into a roomette and not a bedroom, all I have to do is ask for an even numbered one (I think!) and I enjoy the same Hudson River views.
The LSL takes a long time and has stretches where the scenery isn’t always fascinating, but for sheer beauty, the views along the Hudson make it all worthwhile to me year after year.
Perhaps the best ‘proof’ of this was in 1958, when the NYC put (horrors! My pearls!!) coaches on the Century, and regulars like Lucius Beebe jumped ship to the still-all-Pullman Broadway. It didn’t seem to take long for that not to matter. How much of that was banging through the Alleghenies, I don’t know, but the PRR didn’t seem to be able to execute with the panache of the Century even when the latter had a coach section.
I was miserable when I heard the Century was being taken off (the Twentieth Century Limited, the most famous train in the world???) but the argument was made in Trains that the NYC was taking it off at the top of its performance, before any compromising had to be made with the reputation and the name.
In the forties and fifties - all carriers running passenger trains took pride in their operations, however, as the red ink in their operation became more plentiful, pride died and the brutal aspects of trying to make a profit took over the carriers mind set.
At least in the beginning, the fiction was that the coaches belonged to the Commodore Vanderbilt, which was combined with the Century. The same sort of fiction was used on IC’s Panama Limited (Magnolia Star) and SP’s Lark (Starlight).
In the Summer of 1960 & 61 I was on a traveling Pony League baseball team from Garrett and I recall playing games on fields at both Kendallville and Waterloo where the fields overlooked the NYC Main from Chicago to Cleveland. Recall watching the 20th Century stream past - didn’t know and didn’t care if coaches were on the train.
In 1961 we had a family vacation - rode the Panama Limited Chicago to New Orleans, The Gulf Wind from New Orleans to Jacksonville. Rented a car and spent a week at Daytona Beach. Took the Silver Meteor from Jacksonville to DC and spent a week with Maryland family before takeing the Capitol Limited back to Garrett.
The recent Photo of the Day “Roosevelt Road revisited” shows a chang in track layout at Grand Central, not all that long before it closed. Track diagrams from the 1930s to the 1950s do not show any double slip switches. The photo shows the outbound Capitol Limited using on with another in clear view.
No obvious reason for them. Maybe due to changes in express and LCL traffic.
