I’m researching the 1912 baseball season and am interested in learning what I can about train travel among US cities. I would like, to the extent to possible, to know the routes, the approximate schedules, elapsed times, stations, and about train cars.
Any help directing me to useful sources would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Phil
A very interesting but ambitious project. I suggest you go to histories of the railroads that serviced the cities where baseball was played in 1912. If I recall there wasnt any teams west of St.Louis. So a list of railroads would include but not limited to:
Pennsylvania, New York Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Chesapeake & Ohio
But not the Virginia & Truckee…Good luck
Thanks very much for this reply. Is there a good basic source to understand the US train system at that time, to identify, as you did in part above, the main companies in operation and their territories? (I’m a novice at this–I don’t know, for example, whether there were regional monopolies or multiple companies in operaration between two given cities, say, Chicago and Detroit, or Boston and New York). Kind regards, Phil
Boston to New York would have been on the New York, New Haven and Hartford with a change of trains in New York over to the Pennsylvania (or Baltimore and Ohio) to cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washigton or Pittsburg(h).From Boston west to Buffalo(?), Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee(?), Detroit or St. Louis the Boston and Albany (owned by the NYC) would have been taken to Albany with a change over to the New York Central for the rest of the trip. I’m not sure where the teams were. There could be one hundred or so routes altogether. I think it would be safe to say only the New Haven would have been used when the Red Sox won the 8 game World Series over the NY Giants.
Those with more knowledge feel free to correct me, but I have heard several times that the interurban network was so strong in this country that “by 1910” a person could go from Hoboken all the way to Chicago by changing interurbans. The only exception was the horseshoe curve section of the PRR near Altoona, which had no interurban.
I doubt this is pure fiction, but it might have that “a squirrel could run all the way from the Hudson to the Mississippi on trees” quality. Has anyone authoritative ever said that? Because Mr. Rosenzweig’s attempts to get a working notion of the importance of American RR’s would not be complete without a grasp of the extent of (electric) interurban railways. That New York-Chi trip, if doable with 98 percent interurbans, would have been considerably cheaper than what we still call “steam.”
Mr. Rosenzweig, if you want to get the Interurban experience I’d recommend you ride the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend Rwy. from Chicago to at least Michigan City. You’ll see that interurbans combined some of the best features of a trolley and of a long-distance train. Interurbans peaked during the Progressive Era, and the CSS&SB is about the only route that is still run as a long-distance route with interurban-type equipment (imported from Japan, I believe, about 20 years ago). You’ll have the speed of a “regular” train and the fun of rolling down the main streets of Michigan City and other small Indiana towns! And “passengers [still] use light at night” (car lights, usually) to flag down the train at smaller country stations.
Allen,
From what I have you could travel from Sheyboyan, Watertown and Janesville in Wisconsin to Little Falls in upstate New York, east of Utica. Illinois Terminal had a large system covering central Illinois which did not connect to the Chicago or Indiana systems.
Nanaimo73, if you’re ever offering free rides on the wayback machine, plug me in for Sheboygan, Wisconsin, this day in 1912. I’ll see a vaudeville show on the old Orpheum circuit and then ride the train(s) down to Chicago! Shouldn’t be more than a change or two 'til I get to Milwaukee and then North Shore all the way!
Seriously, don’t you wish we had some of these interurbans back for commuting purposes? Can’t blame GM for everything, as some of these lines were abandoned by the late 1920s. Blame the Model T, I guess.
Allen
www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=%204014
I photocopied several maps from this book.
The book, the Erie Lackawanna and myself are all from 1960.
Thanks, young’un, I just turned 50 today. The year I was born the AFL and the CIO merged (hah!), Puerto Rico was declared a Commonwealth, and the UP installed dinner-in-the-Domeliners. I may cry.
As a matter of fact, after I read of the superabundance of interurbans in 1912, I know I shall weep copiously. The fools!
The somewhat apocryphal story about traveling between New York and Chicago entirely by interurban is true, but imagine how long it would have taken compared to the steam roads. Most interurbans were underfinanced, under-engineered and under-utilized, so it’s not too surprising that most of them collapsed in the 1920’s when paved roads came into existence. With the exception of South Shore, some of the Iowa interurbans, and a handful of others, they could not handle conventional steam road freight equipment over large parts of their lines and the lack of freight service also contributed to their demise.
Thank you for a much-needed corrective to my wayward nostalgia. Nonetheless, the idea of hopping an Electroliner to Milwaukee still gets me hot.
Allen
al-in-chgo
Sorry to jolt you out of your daydream[
] but I find an occasional reality check to be useful when my nostalgia starts getting the better of me. As you might imagine, my favorite interurban nostalgia would be in the Insull era on one of South Shore’s Chicago-South Bend limiteds, complete with diner or parlor car on six-wheel trucks, the only interurban cars so equipped.
South Shore had a HUGE advantage over the other interburbans in that it was engineered and built to steam road standards, this may be one of the biggest reasons that it is still in existence.
Based on the current NICTD timetables, almost all of South Shore’s tiny flagstops have been discontinued.
My apologies for jolting you out of your daydream [] but I find a reality check to be useful when my nostalgia starts getting out of hand. As you might imagine, my interurban nostalgia goes to the Insull era on one of South Shore’s Chicago-South Bend limiteds, complete with diner or parlor on six-wheel trucks, the only interurban passenger cars so equipped.
South Shore’s HUGE advantage over almost all other interurbans was that it was engineered and built to steam road standards. This may be a major reason for why it is still in existence.
A look at NICTD’s current timetables shows that almost all of the tiny flagstops have been discontinued.
CSSHEGEWISCH-
If you are stating you could have ridden from Chicago to New York STATE by electric interurbans I agree with you. If you are saying New York CITY, the information you heard would seem to be incorrect. Little Falls and Oneonta I believe would have been the limit.
Allen-
I’m planning our route. I have not used my Waybach machine since I lost my cat. I don’t know when he is.
pmrosenzweig-
Since this is your thread, I’ll detour back to 1912 baseball for a bit.
My understanding of the majors in 1912 would be,(Cities),
National League
1-Boston Braves
2-Brooklyn Dodgers
3-Chicago Cubs
4-Cincinnati Reds
5-New York Giants
6-Philadelphia Phillies
7-Pittsburg(h) Pirates
8-St. Louis Cardinals
American League
1-Boston Red Sox
2-Chicago White Sox
3-Cleveland Indians
4-Detroit Tigers
5-New York Yankees
6-Philadelphia Athletics
7-St. Louis Browns
8-Washington Senators
This would be 10 cities-
Boston (2), Chicago (2), Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, New York (3), Philadelphia (2), Pittsburg(no h back then), St. Louis (2), and Washington
The number of connecting routes would be 45 (9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=45)
Do you want a list of the best routes ? Some city pairs would have 3 or 4 choices.
You could not tell which teams would ride which trains. You would have to make a series of guesses. You could go to your library and ask if they could get a inter-library loan of a 1912 Official Guide to the Railways.
Thanks for this reply, nainaimo73.
You are correct about the teams, and let me say a bit more about travel. If you look at the NL, for starters, there were four east coast teams, north to south from Boston to NY and Brooklyn to Philly. Visiting teams would often travel up and down the eastern seaboard to these four cities. Then teams would make swings west, which meant to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, not necessarily in that order, but youget the idea. So what would interest me would be to identify the main rail links that would take teams along the four eastern cities, and then the most likely train lines through the west.
For the AL, again the eastern teams ran from Boston to NY to Philly to Washington. The western swing was to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis. Once again, to have some idea of likely routes and times. For instance, if a visiting team left St. Louis and travelled to Cincinnati, would there have been trains leaving in the evening for an overnight, or would it likely have been a full travel day? Direct or change? Same for Pitt to NY, would this have been an overnight or a full day? Direct or change of trains? These are the sorts of things I would be interested to know.
Thanks very much. Phil Rosenzweig
Well, you’re way out of my league now.[;)]
Your best bet is to try to get an Official Guide of the Railways from your library.
I was thinking interleague, so 45 routes is wrong. It would have been 21 NL routes and 28 AL routes.(Brooklyn+New York).
The Pennsylvania reached Manhattan in 1910 but the Hells Gate line did not open until 1917.
These would all be day games, wouldn’t they ?
As a Cub fan of some seniority, I would think that I know a few things about day games. Night baseball didn’t start until 1935 when the Cincinnati Reds installed lights in Crosley Field. pmrozenzweig looks like he’s been reading a lot of Leonard Koppett’s old columns about baseball in the prewar era but he is right, road schedules were planned to minimize travel times.
Phil,
I’m going to list the routes I believe the teams would have used. I would guess the travel times would not be too much slower than Amtrak’s. Mileage approximate.
All 16 teams would not use the same routes, I have only listed my best guesses.
1-Boston to New York (AL and NL)
New York, New Haven and Hartford 230 miles.
2-New York and Philadelphia(AL and NL)
Pennsylvania RR 90 miles
3-Boston and Philadelphia (AL and NL)
combine the first two routes with a cross town transfer in Manhattan
4-Philadelphia and Washington (AL)
Pennsylvania RR 133 miles
5-New York and Washington (AL)
Pennsylvania RR 224 miles
6-Boston and Washington (AL)
B-NY + NY-Wa + transfer
7-Philadelphia and Pittsburg(h) (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 348 miles
8-New York and Pittsburg(h) (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 438 miles
9-Boston and Pittsburg(h) (NL)
B-NY + NY-Pi + transfer
10-Pittsburg(h) and Cincinnati (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 310 miles
(B&O 15 miles longer, both through Columbus)
11-Philadelphia and Cincinnati (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 658 miles
12-New York and Cincinnati (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 748 miles
13-Boston and Cincinnati (NL)
B-NY + NY-Ci + transfer
14-Cincinnati and St. Louis (NL)
Baltimore and Ohio 338 miles
15-Pittsburg(h) and St. Louis (NL)
Pennsylvania RR 611 miles
16-Philadelphia and St. Louis (AL and NL)
Pennsylvania RR 959 miles
17-New York and St. Louis (AL and NL)
Pennsylvania RR 1,050 miles
18-Boston and St. Louis (AL and NL)
New York Central system 1,200 miles
Boston and Albany to Albany 200 miles
New York Central to Cleveland 476 miles
Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago and St. Louis to St. Louis 524 miles
19-Washington and St. Louis (AL)
Baltimore and Ohio
I don’t think the Pennsylvania was serving Detroit as early as 1912 … I think the service started around 1920. So service from Philadelphia to Detroit might have been via B&O or maybe Reading-Lehigh Valley-Michigan Central (I know there was through Pullman service on this route in the 1920s).
I suspect that if a team had to travel from Boston to Philadelphia or Washington without stopping in New York for games, it might have used overnight service that either involved ferrying cars across the harbor or detouring around New York via Poughkeepsie, rather than transferring trains. On the other hand, Boston teams might always have been scheduled to play in New York on the way to Philadelphia and Washington. This would be similar to the practice of west coast swings for teams from the east since 1957.
Philadelphia to Washington travelers also had the option of using the B&O.
Boston to Pittsburgh travelers also had the option of an NYC route that would not have involved changing trains and stations in New York. B&A to Albany; NYC to Ashtabula; Pittsburgh & Lake Erie to Pittsburgh.
St. Lous to Cincinnati also had the option of Big Four with cars switched between trains in Indianapolis.
Chicago to St. Louis travelers also had the option of Chicago and Eastern Illinois, Wabash, or Illinois Central.
New York to Chicago travel might also have been via the Pennsylvania (908 miles).
Baltimore and Ohio also served Pittsburgh to Chicago.
I think it’s a mistake to assume that a team would necessarily have traveled the shortest route. I don’t think times varied much from one route to another depending on length. Speed was not that much of a competitive point then. Nor, in many cases, would teams necessarily have been inclined to use the fastest service. I know that in the 1920s many trains had extra fares based on the time. All trains going from New York to Chicago, for instance, charged an extra fare of $1.20 per hour f
Phil,
I thought this question might have been better asked on the Classic Trains forum so I put a link over there to get more people to see your thread. Keep checking back here and I’m sure more knowledgeable guys like ForestRump will help you.