Special Collections
The Railroad Timetable:
A Neglected Research Source
H. ROGER GRANT
From Books at Iowa 53
(November 1990)
Copyright: The
University of Iowa
(See the finding aid for the John P. Vander Maas Railroadiana Collection, the collection discussed in this essay at MsC468)
The Special Collections Department of The University of Iowa Libraries owns a fascinating assortment of American railroad timetables in the John P. Vander Maas Collection of Railroadiana. They are especially wide-ranging and are richest for Midwestern or "Granger" carriers.
While most people are familiar with airline and perhaps intercity bus timetables, they probably know little about railroad schedules before the appearance of Amtrak folders. When Amtrak (officially the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) emerged on 1 May 1971, it revolutionized passenger schedules. Except for The Official Railway Guide, designed mainly for railroad personnel, never before had a single national timetable been issued for public consumption. Earlier, however, hundreds of railroads produced thousands of separate folders.
Railroad schedulesare nearly as old as the industry itself. When steamcars debuted in the early 1830s, companies like the Baltimore & Ohio, South Carolina, and Western Railway of Massachusetts prepared printed listings of arrival and/or departure times for station stops. Usually these tiny pikes operated only several score of miles, and their timetables were simple one-sheet broadsides. Undoubtedly inspired by contemporary stagecoach and steamboat poster-type schedules, railroad timetables were not intended for personal possession. Rather these broadsides, often measuring 10 by 15 inches or more, adorned depot walls and likely those of other public places: hotels' general stores, and the like. Early timetables might be designed for employees as well; some listed the principal operating rules, usually on the reverse side. This was understandable since many of these roads hauled freight shipments and passengers -- "hogs and humans" -- in the same "mixed" train.
But as railroad companies grew and systems developed, particularly after the Civil War, broadsides no longer served effectively either travelers or employees. Traffic burgeoned and so did the need for more specialized formats. What became common then were separate public and operating (employee) schedules.
A
good illustration of the
nineteenth century public timetable is one that dates from 1892 for
the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway (BCR&N), the
self-proclaimed "Iowa Route." This company, nee Burlington, Cedar
Rapids & Minnesota and after 1902 part of the Chicago, Rock
Island & Pacific (Rock Island) Railroad, operated approximately
1,300 route miles in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Its main line
extended from Burlington, Iowa, through Cedar Rapids to Albert Lea,
Minnesota, a distance of 253 miles, and forged a direct connection
between St. Louis and the Twin Cities. This schedule duly lists all
stations and all passenger trains. And it includes those of "way
freights" that carried passengers; most freight trains, though, did
not. The BCR&N warned prospective patrons that "Freight trains
shown on this Time Card will carry passengers only when provided with
Tickets." Conductors, then, were not permitted to collect cash fares,
probably because they were a nuisance and employees' honesty (or lack
thereoo could not be easily monitored. And as with some contemporary
carriers, the road sold advertising space in its public timetables;
it surely did so to offset the cost of distributing thousands of free
copies to the public.
This
particular Iowa Route timetable holds considerable value. Most of
all, it tells much about the nature of this nearly forgotten road.
Individual schedules note station stops -- an indication that depots
or at least shelters once existed there, and, of course, length of
travel and frequency of service. Take the BCR&N's "Iowa City
Division." This branch line ran twenty-one miles from a main line
connection at Elmira, through Iowa City, to Iowa junction, where it
joined the Muscatine-to-Montezuma trackage. The company operated
three through trains daily except Sunday, including a mixed one, and
it provided additional service to either Elmira or Iowa Junction.
Speeds were modest; BCR&N trains were hardly "ballast scorchers."
Yet they were not unusually slow by late nineteenth century
standards. Train Number 4, the "Burlington Passenger," for example,
covered the distance betweenElmira and Iowa junction in fifty minutes
or about twenty-five miles per hour. The way-freight, not
surprisingly, traveled at a much more leisurely rate: it took two
hours and twenty minutes to cover the twenty-one miles. This 1892
folder tells more. It indicates, for one thing, that the United
States Express Company, one of several privately-owned package
forwarders before World War 1, served communities along this road.
Even advertisements are educational. Since railroads, like the
BCR&N, pushed to open the trans-Mississippi west to settlement,
land promoters understandably seized this opportunity to inform
travelers seeking new homes that they could provide desirable real
estate. Similarly, these advertisements reveal the prose and selling
techniques common to the period. For example, DeSmet, South Dakota,
realtor C.C. Hortman, who offered farms in Kingsbury and Clark
counties, believed that he could attract attention with a clever
word-gram. And perhaps he did.
Not only did the Iowa
Route distribute public
timetables, complete with snappy advertisements, it also produced
operating ones. As. the company noted on each cover: "For the
Government and Information of Employes [sic] Only. Not for
Information of the Public." Customarily railroads listed various
"classes" of trains. In the case of BCR&N "Time Table No. 97,"
effective 4 June 1899, two classes of passenger trains ("first" and
"second") and a local freight chugged over the Iowa City Division.
What is particularly valuable about this genre of schedule is that it
gives details of operations, including exact mileage between
stations, location of telegraph offices, and times for freight
movements.
More modern public timetables continue the tradition of those published during the late nineteenth century. Yet, these schedules commonly appear in a standard size (9 by 4 inches), sport a corporate logo on the cover (frequently in color), feature local and/or system maps, and contain more pages -- after all, system-building of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced large, even gigantic carriers, and intercity passenger traffic generally increased until the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Rock
Island timetables illustrate the nature of these publications, both
during and after the golden age of railroading. For more than seventy
years they consisted of a standard size and format (station agents
instantly recognized a Rock Island folder), and featured the road's
logo, which evolved from horseshoe and globe designs to a distinctive
shield about 1900. These timeta-bles customarily contain a system
map, index of stations, railroad-related advertisements (usually used
as filler material), sleeping and parlor car charges, and related
information.
They also provide condensed thorough schedules with equipment notations and list in a detailed fashion every train, including mixed ones, that handled passengers. While the length of these timetables varied, they usually exceeded thirty pages until the 1960s. But as the Rock Island withdrew passenger runs, the schedules shrank noticeably. The company's last public timetables resemble those of the early and mid-nineteenth century: they were merely 9 by 4 inch cards with schedules on one side and travel information on the other. Contemporary operating timetables also became highly standardized, although with an important variation. Those printed before World War II commonly came in a large-style format, measuring approximately 11 by 14 inches. Some roads used even larger ones, appropriately dubbed "bed-sheets." Later these timetables took a less awkward 9 by 10 inch form, and so they could be folded easily to fit the pocket of a trainman's uniform or overalls. Ultimately, most came in a reduced (usually 5 by 9 inch) size.
Whether they used large or small
timetables, railroads issued these
employee timecards by operating divisions or perhaps by operating
districts within a division. Only after passenger trains disappeared
and decisions were made to dispatch freight trains as "extras," that
is without a printed schedule, did these timetables encompass an
entire railroad. (Smaller roads, especially shortlines, had long used
system-wide timecards). Companies marked them sequentially,
frequently with big colored Arabic numerals, and commanded personnel
to "Destroy All Time Tables of Previous Date." They did not want
their employees to operate trains with an out-of-date timetable:
Disaster might result, for times printed in these schedules gave
crews legal rights if obeyed properly.
More
so than employee timetables from the last century, twentieth century
ones minutely detail railroading over a particular stretch of
trackage. Take the case of Rock Island's "No. 6" timecard for the
First District of the Des Moines Division, which took effect on 5
June 1938. The page that includes "Main Line Westward ...
Sub-Division 4" shows passenger trains (first-class) with names and
numbers and freight trains (second-class), also with names -- for
example, "Chicago, Colorado, Calif. Red Ball" and "East Iowa Red
Ball" -- and numbers. The timetable also notes car capacities of
sidings and other tracks, distances between stations and railroad
junctions and crossings, and train-support facilities. Marengo, Iowa,
for instance, had both a water tank [W] and coal chute
[F] for servicing steam locomotives.
Employee timetables provide even more data. They list names of operating officials and physicians, including "local surgeons"; note particular operating instructions, for example speed restrictions; indicate hours when agents are on duty; and contain "Special Instructions" for additional rules and commentary about train operations.
Unlike public timetables, employee timetables are more difficult to find. This is true for both the University's Special Collections and other research libraries. The explanation unquestionably involves that universal instruction to personnel to destroy previous issues. And, too, railroads printed fewer of these timetables. A large ("Class 1") carrier, like the Rock Island, generally ordered 10,000 to 20,000 copies of a public timetable issue but fewer than a thousand of an operating one.
Uses for old timetables are considerable. They run the gamut from the obvious -- to check on the number of passenger and/or freight trains that served a community at a particular point in time -- to the less readily apparent. Perhaps someone involved in historic preservation wishes to research a local depot. An operating schedule would tell about staffing, satellite facilities and other matter involving daily business. This information, coupled with oral histories, newspapers, photographs, maps, and government reports, can flesh out a building's past. In addition to utilitarianism, there exists an aesthetic dimension.
Railroad enthusiasts, most of all, find considerable pleasure in examining such artifacts. Some public timetables are truly works of art, and all make possible a mental trip by train through the past.
