Direction on the NYNH&H

How was direction set on the NH? In terms of determining superiority, etc. For instance, a train going from GCT to NH, is that considered a eastward or a northbound train? And on the branches? A train going from South Norwalk to Danbury? And what direction had superiority for Manual Block rules? Thanks in advance!

I believe everything on the NH was either East (toward Boston) or West (toward NY), although I've also found a number of places where North and South are used, so I'm not completely positive on that.

Superiority wasn't quite so simple - it involved class and right - not direction.
The only rules regarding it in my 1956 Operating Rules book state:

• 71. A train is superior to another train by right or class. Right is conferred by train order; class by timetable. Right is superior to class.
• 73. Extra trains are inferior to regular trains."

Superiority was explicitly defined in the employee timetable for each scheduled train, which defined which train would take the siding at a meet. Any scheduled train was automatically superior to an unscheduled (extra) one. Any meet between unscheduled trains would have been established via train orders that explicitly defined which train was to take the siding.

Excellent, thanks for the response! I had forgotten about class. I couldn't find my copy of an old book of rules and was wondering how they handled scheduled meets say like on the Danbury branch.

Scheduled meets were defined in the timetable. The 1943 ETT I have (which unfortunately only includes selected pages that cover the Braintree-Hyannis line, and not the entire ETT) explicitly states which train is to take the siding.

Would the Old Colony lines have been oriented relative to Boston? I know railroad direction is always based on general travel direction, but I assume, say, Boston to Provincetown could have originally been westbound to Boston, or Lowell to Framingham could have been north-south.

Looking at the routes listed in the 1950 ETT, it looks like most of the former Old Colony routes are North-South. Former NY&NE routes are mainly East-West, as are the "original" NYNH&H ones.

This question got me thinking, so I pulled out a system map of the New Haven, and started marking lines as East-West or North-South. It turns out that yes, the New Haven used both roughly equally, and it seems to have been divided by predecessor.
Former Old Colony: North-South
Former Boston & Providence: East-West
Original NYNH&H: East-West
Former Norwich & Worcester: North-South
Former Providence & Worcester: North-South
Former New Haven & Northampton: North-South
Former Housatonic: North-South

Unfortunately the timetable I had didn't include much of the former CNE, so I can't tell for those lines, but it's interesting how it breaks out along predecessor lines