A SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICAN RAILWAY TIMETABLES
adapted from The Wonderful World Of
Railroad Timetables,
by Dick Clover and Tom Coval (© 1979)
revised
by A. B. Magary
INTRODUCTION:
CLASSIFICATION OF RAILROAD TIMETABLES
According to Merriam-Webster’s Second Edition, a “schedule” is an outline of
regularly occurring events and a “timetable” is the document in which the
schedule is printed. In normal parlance and in this account, the terms
"timetable" and "schedule" will be used as if synonymous.
While this article is concerned with timetables issued for railway travel,
timetables were issued by all other forms of transportation until made redundant by the computer era.
The first and most important distinction is the division into either
public or employees timetables. In the case of public timetables, a further
separation is made to reflect different services offered by
railway companies or differing audiences for the publication: System timetables; Condensed
issues; Branch lines; Suburban forms; Name-train issues; and Brochures containing schedules.
System Timetables. A system timetable shows the railroad's
nearly complete passenger service, including a detailed station list and local trains,
but usually does not include suburban operations. The very largest systems, notably
the Pennsylvania, excluded regional operations from their “Form 1”
system schedule in order to keep its size manageable. These issues
form the core of virtually all collections of public railroad timetables.
Condensed Timetables . These timetables were designed for
the traveler interested in through travel to major points of importance. Such
schedules were less costly to produce and less bulky, often distributed beyond
the direct service area of the railway. Some, especially those issued by the
Woodward & Tiernan publishing house of St. Louis,
contained only schedules in one direction, on the theory that a new
timetable would probably be in effect by the time the passenger returned.
These are of much less interest to collectors than
the system issues, even though some have attractive and colorful covers.
Timetables issued in the 1870s were nearly all in this format.
Branch Line and Suburban Timetables , showing complete
service for a particular branch or branches. Many collectors include such issues
in their collections. Most of such timetables have a form number which remains
consistent from issue to issue. This category does not include individual
station timetables used in suburban territory, often issued by an advertising contractor such
as TDI. The Pennsylvania RR was a special case. They were the
"Standard" railroad of American railroad and after the 1870s never issued anything
close to a "system" timetable. Their many forms are
usually only of interest to those afflicted with Asperger syndrome, but
a summary is now available for those who dare to look!
Name Train Timetables
are a popular sub-category
among collectors. The folder should contain a schedule of
the featured train. These folders are often very ornate and the
best contain diagrams of the individual cars in the train’s consist.
Brochures including timetables. Many small roads whose claim to
fame was scenery or some other geographical feature, issued a destination promotion
brochure which included a schedule, almost as an afterthought. It may be
the only publication of that road, and be ten
percent schedule and ninety percent brochure. Most collectors regard these issues
as “system” if they were the sole publication of the line.
Official Guides
. Enterprising publishers assembled
timetables from multiple railroads on a national, regional or city basis and
obtained “official” sanction from the participating railways in order to ensure
public credibility for their compendiums. This industry flourished in the late
1800s. Among the more prominent names were Appleton, Rand-McNally,
Dinsmore, American, Pathfinder, and Doggett. The national guides were all
eventually put out of business by an astute ticket agent named Edward Vernon,
who convinced the industry to adopt a single official publication, first known as
The Travelers' Official Railway Guide of the United States and Canada and
later as The Official Guide Of The Railways And Steam Navigation Lines
of the United States, "Porto" Rico, Canada, Mexico and
Cuba. Published monthly from 1868 well into the Amtrak era, this
“Official Guide” serves as the basic reference for the serious collector.(Note on Official
Guide History)
On a more local level, it was common practice
in the 1900-1930 period for several electric interurban lines serving one area
to cooperate on a single joint timetable, often with
the sponsorship of a publisher and advertisers. In some cases where
this practice was successful, the participating lines discontinued their individual publications.
RAILROAD NAMES
Timetables are usually catalogued
according to the name of the issuing company, but determining the corporate
name may be troublesome in many cases, since many timetables do not
bear the precise corporate name of the issuer. This
is simply because railroads have acquired trade names or nicknames with
which the public is more familiar. Here are some typical examples:
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad =
The Milwaukee Road
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway = Santa Fe
National Railroad Passenger Corp. = Amtrak
In some cases, the trade name, or “DBA”, covers a number
of related railways with common ownership but different names,
and those names are not always evident to the public. For example,
in 1935 a Missouri Pacific Lines system timetable contained schedules for the
Missouri Pacific RR, Gulf Coast Lines and the International-Great
Northern RR. A collector should be aware of these permutations and
settle on an internally consistent system of classification for a collection.
The most valuable single naming resource is a reference
entitled Railroad Names , privately published by
the late William D. Edson. The NAOTC website continues to develop a more
modest reference utility. Official Guides and Poor's Manuals
are the best traditional reference books ordinarily available and familiar to
collectors. For many names, it will be necessary to refer to older issues of the
above publications, as railroad corporations undergo changes in name as do other
corporations. A frequent variation is found where a railroad becomes a
Railway instead of Railroad or vice versa as the result of a
re-organization. (For example, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad
became the Philadelphia & Reading Railway
.) The
Seaboard Coast Line was the result of the merger of Seaboard Air Line
and Atlantic Coast Line. Bear in mind that each
such change results in a new entity for the collector to
reach for in adding to his total of timetable issuing companies.
THE EVOLUTION OF RAILROAD TIMETABLES
The history of North American timetables can
be neatly divided
into the following time periods:
Inception to Civil War (1830-1865).
Timetables from the beginning of railroading in the 1830s
up to the Civil War era are of great historical interest, depicting how railroad
pioneers went about getting our early rail system in operation. Early railroads
were typically short point-to-point lines. The timetables of this era
generally took the form of newspaper advertisements and posters, known as
“broadsides”. The newspaper notices often showed a woodcut of a railroad train
and a condensed schedule of operations. They may be found in almost any
newspaper of the time. The very first
was placed by the Baltimore & Ohio Rail Road on May 20,
1830, in the Baltimore Patriot announcing the commencement of service over the
first American railroad line beginning on May 24 (Note
the "1820" date typo in the clipping.). While useful to the
railway historian, they have typically been of little interest to collectors.
The broadsides were first printed for use at stations and
then adapted for distribution to hotels and other public places. As their
distribution expanded, embellishments such as woodcuts of locomotives or trains
were added. In the 1840s, some railroads began to distribute small cards to
their customers shown the times of trains. Some lines also began to use a
schedule printed on a single sheet which actually served as the authority
to operate trains, giving a train in one direction specific superiority over
another in the event of a meeting. These became known as “employees
timetables” and continue to serve as basic operating authority
documents on railways today. Consistent with the printing technology of the
day, these and the larger broadsides were single sheet, one-sided affairs.
In 1841 the Erie Railroad, then extending to Goshen, New York, produced its
first official timetable for the information and regulation of employees, not as
might be expected, by printing, but by pen and ink on half-sheets of note paper.
The work was done by a clerk under the direction of the Superintendent of
Transportation, S.S. Post. There was one for Mr. Post, also one for the superintendent of the road, the
master mechanic, two engineers, two conductors, the station agent at Chester and
finally, one for the agent at Goshen. When the demand for timetables
became too great for hand copying, they were printed.
Edward Harold Mott, author of the 1899 history of the Erie,
"Between the Ocean and the Lakes". described the development as follows:
"Written time-tables were in use until too many copies
were required to stock the employees, and then printed ones came in. The public
was kept informed of the movement of trains and the changes in time by handbills
and announcements in New York newspapers and the two Goshen newspapers ... One
of the original official timetables, made with a pen, would today be of
priceless value as a relic of pioneer railroading, and a printed copy of one would be of scarcely less intrinsic
worth as a curiosity in the history of railroad operating, but not
one of either is in existence. The oldest handbills announcing changes in
the running of trains on the Erie and giving
information as to passenger rates and regulations, that the author has
been able to find, were issued in the spring of 1847."
As the Civil War approached, the railways began to experiment with timetable
formats, usually in order to display more than a single line and a map of an
expanding system. The early small cards evolved into folded sheets. Some
broadsides were issued with maps printed on the reverse side, and then issued
on lighter paper so they could be folded. But this early development
would have to wait out the War before it could flourish. The
War, of course, disrupted all civilian life and most
particularly railway operations. Surviving documents related to timetables from the Civil
War period itself are very scarce, most particularly from the Confederacy.
Civil War to Stapler (1865-1888)
The reconstruction period was a time for rapid advances in
the development of the railway(in all developed countries) and also marked a
period of great advances in printing technology. The railways spawned the first
large scale printing houses not connected with the newspaper business to supply
them with stock certificates, tickets, business forms and maps. The salesmen of
the printers convinced the railroads to buy new printed products as printing
technology improved. Timetables issued during this period moved from being dry
informational documents to decorative promotional publications. A few timetables
were printed by the expensive engraving process used by the banknote companies
and featured complex engraved maps and vignettes of trackside scenery. More
common was the adoption of a new process known as wax engraving which permitted
to creation of complex maps and illustrations in multiple colors. (Note on Wax engraving)
This technology was the basis for the beginning of the “golden age”
of railroad timetables which lasted until the outbreak of the First World
War. The combination of new printing techniques and the
public’s new fondness for ornamentation in prose and picture gave rise
to ornate timetables whose extravagant embellishments were never to be surpassed. (Library of Congress note on printers)
After the Civil War, railway development on the America
was aided by the establishment of a standard gage, permitting interchange of
rolling stock, as well as the introduction of Standard Time in 1885, which permitted a long distance
operations to be run as a coordinated entity. As small railways grew
into systems and long distance travel became more customary, the need for
a timetable to display more information soon exhausted the
limitations of a single sheet of paper. During this period, distribution
of timetables to other railway offices, stations and hotels became customary.
To facilitate this distribution and the presentation of
timetables from various companies in an organized fashion, printers settled on a
standard dimension of four inches wide by nine inches tall for most timetables
intended for the public. Whatever could be printed on a large sheet of paper
would then be reduced by a series of complicated folds into a nominal 4x9
folder. Typically, one side of the sheet contained schedules and related
information, while the reverse side displayed a large ornate map with the
sponsoring railway shown as big and straight as the imagination would tolerate.
The apogee was reached in 1887, when the Chicago & Alton, a rather small line between Chicago and
St. Louis, issued a 33” x 24” sheet which reduced by a
series of ten folds to a 54 panel 4x8 folder. Timetables of
this “fold-out” style of timetable provided a large canvas
for railroads to display detailed and ornamented maps. but they suffered
from being cumbersome to use and quickly deteriorated at the folds.
Stapler to World War I (1889-1917)
The solution to this physical dilemma
came forward in the form of the mechanical stapler. which had been
patented in the 1870s but was not adapted to commercial printing until
1889. (Stapler history) Multiple page booklets of uniform size
could now be cheaply and quickly produced in large quantity, which
had not been possible with earlier techniques of gluing or sewing.
During the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, the large fold-out format gave
way to the style which has generally prevailed ever since, the “Timetable”
format. This consists of 16x9 collated sheets, folded and stapled along the center into a 8x9
booklet, and then folded again into a 4x9 dimension to fit an
envelope or standardized display rack for stations and hotels. In this format,
information was easier to locate, the refolding and wear
and tear at the folds was eliminated. The big disadvantage was
that maps were now restricted to the 16x9 “centerfold” at best.
The advent of the standard stapled timetable format
coincided with the final consolidation of early railways into systems that would
remain fairly stable in structure for more than fifty years, until the final dissolution of
the American rail passenger services in the 1960s. Ornamentation became focused on
the timetable cover. Gradually, intricate or ornate designs gave way to bold
logos in bright colors. Major systems adopted a consistent
appearance from one issue to the next in order to be
easily identifiable in a timetable rack displaying dozens of different railways
World War I Government Control (1918-1920)
In December, 1917, America’s rail system was suffering
from massive congestion resulting from the War buildup. The Government of the
United States under President Wilson seized control of the Nation's railroads
from their owners and placed them all under the control of the United States
Railroad Administration. William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, took on
the additional position of Director General of the USRA. The period of control
began December 28, 1917 and lasted until March 1, 1920,
a period of approximately twenty-six months. Only the most marginal small steam
railways and electric interurban lines were excluded from the takeover. The story
of American’s first experiment with large scale socialism is
best left for others to tell, except for the dramatic effect
that the seizure had on the issuance of America’s railway schedules..
Timetables issued by USRA bore the heading on the front panel: “UNITED STATES
RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION, W.G. McAdoo, Director General of Railroads” (or his
successor, Walker D. Hines), and included a quaint admonition to “Avoid Waste –
Keep this Timetable” In some cases. the USRA continued to permit a logo on the
cover in black-and-white. All type fonts and “boiler-plate” travel
information used in all the issues were identical, to enforce the image
of unity. Although the private companies had been named variously Railroad, Railway
or Rail Road, under the USRA they all became
“Railroads”. The printing of timetables was contracted out to government bidders
who were not necessarily the same vendors used by the railways.
Armistice to Amtrak (1920-1971)
When the War ended the railroads were returned to
their owners. The effect of the USRA takeover had been to destroy the
traditional relationship between each railroad and its printing vendor, so
timetable production generally continued in the new USRA model for a time before
starting to show the color and sparkle of competitive differentiation. But as
each company finally returned to issues of a more individual design, a new level
of consistency from issue to issue was followed, resulting in less visual
variety than had existed before the War. Some railways, notably the Lehigh
Valley, Atlantic Coast Line and L&N, resumed cover designs used since the turn of the Century and
continued their use until the end of passenger service. Another reason for
uniformity during this period is that the Interstate Commerce Commission essentially froze
the competitive framework of the industry, allowing virtually no
realignments or mergers from 1920 to 1964, when the Norfolk &
Western was allowed to acquire the Wabash and the Nickel Plate.
This period marked the beginning of the decline of railway
passenger service in America. Passenger traffic reached a peak in 1920 and only
briefly surpassed that during the Second World War. Local trains and branch
services were early victims of automobile competition, many only continuing
because of mail contracts and regulatory obligations. Long distance services
continued to flourish into the boom of the late 1920s, and were propped up after
the depression and World War II by the introduction of cleaner diesel
locomotives, air-conditioning and streamlined design. But by 1958 the end came
more clearly into view as the Interstate Highway System was completed and
airlines introduced jet-powered aircraft. The last straw was the decision of the
U.S. Post Office to remove mail from the trains in 1967.
Mail revenue had not only provided the last dependable stream of revenue
for many passenger operations, it also provided a rationale for regulatory agencies
to force the continuance of money-losing trains in the
name of “public service”. Most railways also faced declining freight revenues
during this period, so a “perfect storm” was in the making.
As railroads began to trim passenger operations with
greater success, the size of the timetables they issued shrank accordingly.
Additional shrinkage resulted from the diminishing interest in using the
timetable as a promotional vehicle. Companies which had once put out a monthly
issue cut back to seasonal, then to twice annually at Daylight Time change. In
fact, some railways, notably the Missouri Pacific and the Chicago
& Eastern Illinois, printed only as often as needed to escape regulatory
criticism. Systems which had issued thick timetables with 36 to 84 pages
(72 to 168 4x9 panels) reduced their publications to
as little as 4-page leaflets or even single 4x9 cards. The
publications became far more spartan in design and quality as well.
The beginning of the railroad merger
movement on the 1960s provided a flicker of interest in this otherwise
bleak landscape. The creation of the Erie-Lackawanna, Burlington Northern,
the new Norfolk & Western and Penn Central led to interesting
rearrangements of some passenger services and the timetables that described them.
Finally, when the patient was writhing in the pain of
terminal illness, Congress administered euthanasia by creating the
National Railroad Passenger Corporation (NRPC), known as Amtrak. Railways were given
the option of delivering their passenger services to Amtrak or continuing on
their own. Only three chose to continue their own
operations (Southern, Rock Island and Rio Grande). Aside from those three,
the last American railway intercity timetables were issued in early 1971.
The Federal Government took over American intercity
passenger operations from the railways on May 1, 1971. The first Amtrak
timetables were exceedingly unattractive publications. Amtrak chose the National
Railway Publication Co. as their printer. This hoary old outfit had printed the
Official Guide for over 100 years and their printing technology remained firmly
rooted in the 1800s. Despite serving as the repository of rail schedules for
over a century, they had no past experience with individual railroad timetables
at all. Of course, the market for their flagship publication had just been
demolished. During the ensuing decades, AMTRAK would go through a variety of
ways to present their evolving operation to the public, a complicated subject best left to
another article. The three holdouts (Southern, Rock Island and Rio Grande) reduced
their issues to double-sided cards until their services ended (in 1979, 1978
and 1983 respectively). During the same period, American railways
operating suburban commuter services turned over nearly all of them to
transit operating authorities who continue to issue schedules of their own.
After the demise of individual railway timetables, issuance by bus lines and airlines continued unabated. But the advent of travel agency computers and personal access to the internet triggered the final cycles of retrenchment. Other factors at play were the demise of old fashioned folder distribution companies that used to stock timetable racks at hotels, and airline deregulation which allowed all airlines to fly anywhere to anywhere, making a map somewhat redundant. In 1985, Republic Airlines decided that its bulky (and expensive) system timetable was being used by a few very loyal "Frequent Flyers", as well as lots of flight personnel. It began to issue a so-called "Employees Timetable" with basic schedules and city codes instead of full airport names. The designation "Employees Timetable" was only meant to diffuse criticism by members of the travelling public that found it hard to use, for it was readily available at airport counters. The savings were huge, there was little negative feedback. The "Employee" designation was dropped, but the concept endured and was subsequently adopted by Northwest after that carrier absorbed Republic in 1986. A Northwest official who moved over to United in 1987 tried to implement the same cost saving, but vociferous United employee reaction blocked the move. Nevertheless, many airlines and bus lines began to issue timetables less frequently so that they only stood for "an example" of service. The last significant holdout, strangely, was Southwest Airlines, who discontinued their system timetable on June 28, 2009. Think how low their fares would have been had they acted twenty years earlier!
On 11 January 2016, Amtrak issued their last printed system timetable. Issues thereafter would be available only in downloadable PDF files.
Last Updated Oct. 9, 2017
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