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.
As you can see from the title on this blog, Amtrak is probably involved. I'm planning a vacation to the west coast on Amtrak. As I plan my 2006 vacation, I start this blog by reflecting on some of my early interest in trains. I should have started this a few weeks earlier but, well, I just didn't think about it until a few days ago. Most of the details of my 2006 vacation are pretty much figured out by now. In the next few days I'll go over some of the options that I looked at.
Click below if you want to read the extended entry.
I’ve always like trains. Every since I was a kid and knew what a train was I’ve always been attracted to them. My parents used to talk about taking me on the streetcars when I was a baby. I know, streetcars are not really “trains” but they do run on rails. I grew up on the corner of First and Avery (now Cardinal) Streets. I lived a block and a half from the L&N freight line and three blocks away from where the passenger line ran. I used to spend Friday nights with my grandparents from my mothers side. They lived a half block from that passenger line. When I got big enough to run up and down the street I figured out what time the trains ran. When I was visiting with my grandparents I would watch the clock so that I could run down to the railroad crossing and watch the trains go by. As a small child I always respected the railroad property. I didn’t play on the tracks. I would just go down there and watch the trains go by. My grandmother had a sister that lived in “Henry County.” They would go to visit here two or three times a year. That’s how I got my first train ride. Boy! Was I excited. I even had my own suitcase. That was probably around 1952. That was also a time when a five year old could walk down the neighborhood street and you didn’t have to worry about all the stuff we worry about today.
My grandfather on my dad’s side lived a half block from us and in the direction of that freight line. Again, when I got big enough to go down there by myself, I would go to his home and he would take me to a place where we could sit in the shade and watch the freight trains go by. I think my most memorable moment while watching trains with him was the time that two trains reached our location at the same time and passed. They were both steam locomotives. Diesels were used on the sleek passenger trains, “the Varnish” and steam was still doing most of the freight work.
Times were different. Brakemen and conductors didn’t use radios to communicate. They use hand signals and the locomotive engineer would reply with whistle signals. You could predict the weather just by listening to those steam whistles. If rain was approaching, that whistle had that lonely hollow sound and it seemed like it carried forever.
When I got big enough to ride my bike a few blocks away from home I would often notice a crew switching some cars to and from sidings for Pepsi, a local coal yard, a lumber yard, Caldwell Tanks, and several other businesses in the neighborhood. I would ride my bike from street to street to watch the crews.
When my brother and I got a little older our family started making four or five trips a year to Cincinnati, Oh. We usually went to Coney Island and/or Crosley Field to watch the Cincinnati Red play baseball. We usually road “the local,” train 4. All I know for sure is that it usually made about a dozen stops between Louisville and Cincinnati. It usually had about 10 baggage cars and one passenger coach. Checking the April 25, 1961 time tables,.train 4 left Louisville at 9:40 AM and got to Cincinnati at 1:30PM. On the return trip it was train 1, departing Cincinnati at 11:15PM and arriving in Louisville at 2:45AM. I always tried to stay awake on the train but sometimes I was just too tired to do it. Occasionally we would ride “The Hummingbird.” It was a first class train and only stopped at Baxter Station in Louisville and another stop in Covington. The Hummingbird left Louisville at 5:00AM and arrived in Cincinnati at 8:05PM. The return trip departed at 6:45PM and arrived in Louisville at 9:50PM. On one occasion we were returning home and the train (train 1) was full. (Remember, it had only one passenger coach.) Usually there were only a hand full of people leaving Cincinnati on that train. Turns out that there had been an NAACP convention in Detroit that day and this train that went to Birmingham and Montgomery Alabama was full of the convention attendees that were returning to their homes in the south. This particular night the train had a Pullman coach attached to the end of the train. As we boarded, the conductor routed everyone onto the old coach but when our family boarded, he sent us to the Pullman. The lights on the Pullman were very dim but as the train started moving, the generator that were driven by a pulley on one of the car’s axel brought the lights up to a normal level. The conductor later told us that the batteries on the Pullman coach were dead and the coach was being sent back to Louisville for repairs. We were the only white people on the train that night. This was the early 60’s and discrimination was still common.
One of the things I allways remember about the train was the drinking water. As a kid we liked to play with things and getting a paper cup and a drink of water was fun. I don't think they ever put any water into the drinking water tank. I think they only put ice in it and just let it melt because the water was truely "ice cold" all of the time.