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Re: (erielack) Lackawanna Passenger Trains
- --- MONTGOMERY| ED <emontgom_@_LAN.TJHSST.EDU> wrote:
> I was looking at my collection of Lackawanna passenger
> timetables over the weekend and wondered how much the
> company "padded" the timetable to keep the trains on line.
> Looking at ETT's over the years it appears that the Lackawanna
> could have run a train making stops at Corning, Elmira,
> Binghamton, Scranton, Stroudsburg, and Dover in a lot faster time
> than their best train could run. I figured, running non-stop over the
> Boonton Line (the real one throught Paterson) and non-stop on the
> cut-off along with other fast running, they could cover the 396 miles
> in maybe 5 1/2 or 6 hours rather than the 8 or so most trains ran
> on.
>
> Even with all those stops, I think they could have done better but
> probably padded the schedule to keep it on time. I suppose in the
> winter they could have experienced a lot of heavy snow running
> from Buffalo to Elmira and then run fast over the Nicholson cut-off
> and through New Jersey to catch up.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
Unlike New York Central's 20th Century Limited, which in its prime ran
non-stop from Grand Central through Albany (pausing at Croton-Harmon to
change engines), the DLW had to make stops along the way for passengers.
The CENTURY was a favored train for those going between New York and
Chicago; the NYC had many other trains serving intermediate points. The
DLW route to Chicago, with the connection at Buffalo (even using the
through sleeper run with the NKP) was hours slower than the NYC or PRR.
The DLW's 'bread and butter' was service between New York/New Jersey and
the farther reaches of its lines. They generally didn't have the
passenger loadings to run an express from New York that would skip its New
Jersey market. The name trains stopped at the bigger stations on the
main: Newark, Brick Church, Summit and Dover. These stops gave access
for the railroad's eastern branches to Montclair and Gladstone and also to
the Boonton Line. The Montclair Branch offered good connections to the
through trains at Newark back then.
Another factor in the so-called padding is that the DLW, like most
railroads then, handled baggage, mail, express and newspapers during those
long station stops. Ten minutes may seem like a lot of time, but that was
needed to man-handle things out of and into the head-end cars. Mail was a
big revenue source to all railroads (except maybe the Long Island after WW
II) and the shift from rails to air and truck in the middle 1960's was the
end of many trains. The mail often paid more than the passengers on a
train! These functions were labor intensive and as wages rose they became unprofitable.
=====
Gary R. Kazin
DL&W Milepost R35.7
Rockaway, New Jersey
http://www.geocities.com/gkazin/index.html
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