by peconicstation
At a flea market recently I found a stack of Trains Magazine's from the mid to late 1940's. It is interesting to read how much excitement there was about passenger trains JUST after WWII, and how the mood changed quickly in the late 40's.
The April, 1948 edition had this feature story.
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"New Haven will abandon Old Colony passenger trains"
Just to highlight, the article mentioned that the New Haven had a clause related to it's recent bankruptcy case that would allow it to drop all Old Colony service if the loss exceeded $800,000. /year. The loss for the period Oct. 1947 to October 1948 was projected at 3.0 million.
Old Colony ridership was listed at being 750,000 per day.
The New Haven would as a "transition" period operate a "limited service " to New Bedford via Mansfield (no definition of what limited would be), a summer service to the Cape (again no definition of what this would be), and 2 doodlebug round trips per day (in the off season) between Boston and Hyannis. The NH could in turn drop this service at any time.
The only government intervention at this point would be assistance to ensure that the close in trackage could be converted to mass transit use.
and....
Quincy officals were upset that their towns character would be changed once it had mass transit service as opposed to train service.
An MIT Professor, and VP of the "Old Colony Transportation Committee" felt that a plan could be put in place that would drop 221 Old Colony Trains per day (how many were running per day??), and would cut the loss by 1.6 mil/yr, and that he felt the NH would "settle" for less than total abandonment.
*********************************
Clearly a ton of political tennis was played out between this offical announcement, and the actual Old Colony shut down in 1959 (?), followed by the ironic timing of the bridge fire. If I am not mistaken in the early to mid 1950's when the NH was a huge cheerleader of the Budd Car they actually added trains to the Old Colony routes. When you consider how long it took the MBTA to reactivate just parts of the Old Colony, and all the work yet to be done (and the expense), it demonstrates that surburban rail service should have had some sort of taxpayer support (or government support) even back then. If that was the case we might be talking about high speed upgardes to Old Colony Routes, as opposed to discussing IF MBTA or any other regular train service will return to the Cape (or New Bedord for that matter).
Another note brought up by the article, it stated that an Old Colony shut down would remove ALL passenger trains EAST of the NH Main.
Fast foward to 1969 and the book "Commuter Railroads" by Patrick Doran. In this book's chapter on Boston it discusses the "limited" service provided by the then Penn Central out of South Station. The only service running east of the main line was 2 Rush Hour Round Trips to Stoughton (and single RT on Saturdays). Was this something that Stoughton had to subsidize??
BTW, at that time (1969) the ENTIRE South Station "commuter" ridership was listed at just 5,500./day (24,000/day on the North Station routes).
Ken
The April, 1948 edition had this feature story.
*********************
"New Haven will abandon Old Colony passenger trains"
Just to highlight, the article mentioned that the New Haven had a clause related to it's recent bankruptcy case that would allow it to drop all Old Colony service if the loss exceeded $800,000. /year. The loss for the period Oct. 1947 to October 1948 was projected at 3.0 million.
Old Colony ridership was listed at being 750,000 per day.
The New Haven would as a "transition" period operate a "limited service " to New Bedford via Mansfield (no definition of what limited would be), a summer service to the Cape (again no definition of what this would be), and 2 doodlebug round trips per day (in the off season) between Boston and Hyannis. The NH could in turn drop this service at any time.
The only government intervention at this point would be assistance to ensure that the close in trackage could be converted to mass transit use.
and....
Quincy officals were upset that their towns character would be changed once it had mass transit service as opposed to train service.
An MIT Professor, and VP of the "Old Colony Transportation Committee" felt that a plan could be put in place that would drop 221 Old Colony Trains per day (how many were running per day??), and would cut the loss by 1.6 mil/yr, and that he felt the NH would "settle" for less than total abandonment.
*********************************
Clearly a ton of political tennis was played out between this offical announcement, and the actual Old Colony shut down in 1959 (?), followed by the ironic timing of the bridge fire. If I am not mistaken in the early to mid 1950's when the NH was a huge cheerleader of the Budd Car they actually added trains to the Old Colony routes. When you consider how long it took the MBTA to reactivate just parts of the Old Colony, and all the work yet to be done (and the expense), it demonstrates that surburban rail service should have had some sort of taxpayer support (or government support) even back then. If that was the case we might be talking about high speed upgardes to Old Colony Routes, as opposed to discussing IF MBTA or any other regular train service will return to the Cape (or New Bedord for that matter).
Another note brought up by the article, it stated that an Old Colony shut down would remove ALL passenger trains EAST of the NH Main.
Fast foward to 1969 and the book "Commuter Railroads" by Patrick Doran. In this book's chapter on Boston it discusses the "limited" service provided by the then Penn Central out of South Station. The only service running east of the main line was 2 Rush Hour Round Trips to Stoughton (and single RT on Saturdays). Was this something that Stoughton had to subsidize??
BTW, at that time (1969) the ENTIRE South Station "commuter" ridership was listed at just 5,500./day (24,000/day on the North Station routes).
Ken
