gokeefe wrote:I've wondered about that. Isn't the commuter traffic just an analog for passenger flows that used to be served by numbered "local" trains?
I checked the Official Guide for December 1944, and it shows that in the evening rush hour the PRR had two Baltimore locals (probably no more than 3 or 4 MP54's), leaving at 5.12 and 6.27 pm, and the B&O had two Baltimore locals, leaving at 5.03 and 6.25, with two other Baltimore trains in between, one stopping only at Laurel, the other at Laurel and Jessup. There were two Brunswick locals, at 4.50 and 5.58 pm. During the same period the PRR had the following long-distance departures:
5.00 The Executive (New York)
5.10 The Red Arrow (Detroit)
5.20 1st Liberty Limited (Chicago, all-sleeper, taking passengers for Englewood and Chicago only) (those were the days)
5.30 2nd Liberty Limited (Chicago)
6.00 The Mount Vernon (New York)
6.20 Spirit of St. Louis
The B&O had, at 10-minute intervals, the Capitol Limited, The Ambassador, and The Columbian, of which the Ambassador discharged passengers only at Martinsburg and beyond, while the other two took passengers only for beyond Cumberland.
As mmi16 mentioned, Virginia was not represented on movements from Union Station. As an indication of how times changed over 70 years, the Washington & Old Dominion operated 3 trains daily, of which only one left Rosslyn in rush hour; the 6.05 (by then apparently a gas-electric) for Leesburg via Falls Church, Dunn Loring, and Vienna. Capital Transit Route 10, which did not serve Union Station, crossed the Potomac briefly to reach Rosslyn and turned around immediately to return to Washington.
Of course number of Federal employees grew vastly from 1944 (when there was no Pentagon, and no Department of Defense; the War Department included the Army Air Corps, and the Navy Department included the Marine Corps) to 2014. It seems that in 1944, and prior, most people who worked in Washington lived in DC.