PRR 52 st street station

In the 6/77 eastward schedule, there's only one morning weekday train at 52nd St-- but nine afternoon trains stop there. All from Paoli or Bryn Mawr-- no Manayunk trains stop.

timz wrote:In the 6/77 eastward schedule, there's only one morning weekday train at 52nd St-- but nine afternoon trains stop there. All from Paoli or Bryn Mawr-- no Manayunk trains stop.

Nine afternoon trains towards Suburban? Wow. By afternoon, do you mean before, including, or after the peak-hours? I can't imagine there would have been that much demand for trains towards Suburban from 52nd Street during the evening peak.

tgolanos wrote:

timz wrote:In the 6/77 eastward schedule, there's only one morning weekday train at 52nd St-- but nine afternoon trains stop there. All from Paoli or Bryn Mawr-- no Manayunk trains stop.

Nine afternoon trains towards Suburban? Wow. By afternoon, do you mean before, including, or after the peak-hours? I can't imagine there would have been that much demand for trains towards Suburban from 52nd Street during the evening peak.

The demand was for trains from the Main Line to 52nd St. That's how the maids, cooks, etc., got home from work. They went westbound in the morning.

Hard to imagine trains full of servants in the 1970s, but hard to explain the schedule otherwise. So far I only looked at Mo-Fr schedules; did servants get weekends off then?

The 6/77 weekday eastward schedule: one at 0616, then nine more from 1540 to 1930. Same in the 30 Apr 78 timetable.

A surprise in the westward schedule: an Amtrak from Suburban to Harrisburg left 52nd St at 0553. Then ten westward locals 0643 to 0923 and one more at 1515. Same in the 30 Apr 1978 timetable except the afternoon train leaves at 1510.

ExCon90 wrote:

tgolanos wrote:

timz wrote:In the 6/77 eastward schedule, there's only one morning weekday train at 52nd St-- but nine afternoon trains stop there. All from Paoli or Bryn Mawr-- no Manayunk trains stop.

Nine afternoon trains towards Suburban? Wow. By afternoon, do you mean before, including, or after the peak-hours? I can't imagine there would have been that much demand for trains towards Suburban from 52nd Street during the evening peak.

The demand was for trains from the Main Line to 52nd St. That's how the maids, cooks, etc., got home from work. They went westbound in the morning.

That makes sense. I guess there were more west-bound trains in the morning for these folks? I also wonder how many students commuted on the Paoli to Villanova in those days. Maybe that made up a small part of the ridership base, too.

At various times between 1966 and 1972, I worked for Bryn Mawr Taxi with an office in the Westbound Bryn Mawr PRR station, Overbrook & West Philadelphia Taxi & Limousine with a stand at the Westbound Overbrook PRR station, and Maxwell Cab in the 54-City Line loop's waiting room. Maxwell also owned Wynwood Cab with a stand at that Westbound PRR station. All had a good maid trade against the current of the Center City rush hour traffic. All 3 companies had discount fares for sharing a cab from those points, the traffic was so heavy. Of course, Bryn Mawr Taxi also had a heavy seasonal and holiday college rush. There were so many 65 cent fare trips that I tried to buy the old P.T.C. and P.R.T. streetcar tokens from S.E.P.T.A. to help with the change making problem. S.E.P.T.A. wasn't able to sell them to me, because I had offered to pay money for them, and the Board resolution said that S.E.P.T.A.was to pay to get rid of them!
On the Paoli Local, some of the mid afternoon inbound express trains that skipped Haverford, Narberth, and Merion stopped at 52nd St. There was even an evening rush hour inbound non stop express from Bryn Mawr at 6:05 p.m. that made its 1st stop at 52nd St. at 6:19 p.m.
During this time there were no Flag Stops at 52nd St.

Does anybody have any shots of the station in use? I was down in that area today, and I can't see how the station would have looked.