If you read the extended entry of the previous posting you might be interested in a few additional bits of information. Roundtrip adult fare between Louisville and Cincinnati in 1965 was $6.85 for coach, or $9.25 for Pullman accommodations. Trains 1 and 4 were coach only but trains 6 (northbound) and 5 (southbound), the Hummingbird was a first class train with Pullman coaches and a Dining car. I seem to remember that it cost my dad about $20.00 for our family to make the trip. I assume that children rode for half price. If that is the case, two full fares and two half fares would be $20.55 and that works out pretty close. As I said before, we were making the trips in the late 50’s and early 60’s and the timetable that I’m quoting from is April 1965 so what my dad actually paid was probably slightly less.
In 1964 there was a World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, a section of the Greater New York City area. My dad decided to take the family to this exposition. We would be traveling by train. This time on the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroads. We of course took the L&N between Louisville and Cincinnati. I don’t remember for sure but I think we took train 4 to Cincinnati. I remember that we had a few hours before we caught the train from Cincinnati to New York. I also remember that we left Cincinnati in mid afternoon. I found an old New York Central timetable, dated October 30, 1960, not exactly the same time period but probably pretty close. According to that timetable, train 16, the “Ohio State Limited” departed Cincinnati at 3:15PM. I also remember going through Cleveland around sundown and arriving at Grand Central Terminal around 8:30 the next morning. The timetable says train 16 was scheduled to arrived in Cleveland at 8:35PM and New York at 8:45 the next morning. The one thing that our family remembered most about that trip was the two young boys that were on our coach. They were not very well behaved and their parents didn’t control them much either. They ran up and down the aisles and just seemed to bother everyone. Shortly after we boarded and were under way, the conductor came through to collect tickets. Since the train would be traveling through the night and there were about 20 stops between Cincinnati and New York, the conductor placed little tickets on the back of each passengers seat to indicate what their destination was. This way he could wake them and make sure they didn’t miss their station. Well, one of those boys was in the seat behind my dad. He ate my dad’s ticket. Later that evening the porter came through the train offering pillows to passengers that would be traveling through the night. Both of those boys had to have pillows because they were “going to be on the train all night.” I guess everyone was thrilled to hear that. Turns out that they got off around 3:00 AM, probably around Syracuse.
I remember waking up the next morning. We were somewhere south of Albany N.Y. and traveling along the Hudson River. The New York Central was nicknamed the “Water Level Route” because so much of their route followed the rivers in the area. That allowed the engineers (civil engineers, not the locomotive engineers) to establish very flat routes with few sharp curves. All along the route from Cincinnati to New York, I measured the time between milepost. Most of the time we hit a milepost every 45 seconds. Turns out we were doing 80 mile per hour. As we traveled south along the Hudson River Valley we were often only 20 or so feet from the river. I remember my dad pointing out Sing Sing prision. We were on the west bank of the river and Sing Sing was on the other side. If you ever wondered where the term “Up the river” came from, Sing Sing prison was about 30 mile “up the river” from New York City and that’s where the criminals often got sent.
We arrived at Grand Central Terminal. I was a little disappointed. It wasn’t as big as I expected. As I later found out, I only saw a small portion of it. You may wonder about me calling it Grand Central Terminal and not Grand Central Station. Technically, Grand Central Station is the name of a New York City post office building, a station on the New York City Subway systems IRT Lexington Avenue route, and the name of a previous station that was located at that same location over 100 years ago.
The World’s Fair was great, but I’m writing about trains. Oh, by the way, we did get to ride the subway. It’s on rails and it technically is a train but it is “light rail,” not real railroading.
Our trip home was on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I don’t really remember too much about that part of the trip. I don’t have any PRR timetables for the period to look at and try to figure out which train we were on. Seems like we left in the morning and got to Cincinnati in time to catch L&N train 1 at 11:15 PM. We left New York from Pennsylvania Station. That station was in need of repair but with passenger rail travel in decline, the station was on its last leg. It was to be demolished in about a year when a newer, smaller station was completed. When it was built, it was the largest railroad passenger terminal ever built. As we departed, I do remember anticipating a chance to see a Pennsylvania Railroad “GG1” locomotive. About an hour after we left New York I spotted a few GG1’s. They were very unique locomotives. You couldn’t confuse them with anything else and the Pennsylvania Railroad was the only railroad that had them. They were rated at 4620 horsepower continuous but for a short duration could exert as much as 9000HP. The other memorable moment was when we arrived at the famous “Horseshoe Curve”. It’s a big curve and as you go around it you can see the engines and most of the coaches in front of you. The route was a very high traffic route. PRR had not two, but three sets of track along much of the route. It was a system that allowed high speed passenger trains and some fast freights to overtake slower freights that had trouble making it up some of the mountains in Pennsylvania.