Modern-day Official Guide to the Railways?

Has there ever been impetus to create a modern day National Guide? e.g. a single book that contains timetables for all train routes in the country, a combination of an Amtrak National Timetable and system timetables for every single commuter rail agency in the country. In terms of planning endpoint-to-endpoint trips, this could be very useful. If one was going from Babylon, Long Island, to Lancaster, California, there is nothing currently that could tell said traveler that their trip is possible completely by rail. Likewise, integrated ticketing across the country should become an option too. Being able to purchase all tickets for that journey from the ticket agent in Babylon would revolutionize long-distance rail-travel. Through-ticketing already exists in other countries and in limited settings in this country, such as between SEPTA and NJ Transit, or between Shore Line East and Metro North, or Amtrak and Caltrain, Amtrak and Metrolink, and Amtrak and NJT's Atlantic City Line.

As I recall, the Official Guide kept going until the later 70's, but I'll glady defer to anyone who can perfect that date.

I'm fairly sure that the passenger edition of the Official Guide lasted into the early 1980s, but most of my railroad paper collection from that period is in storage at another location so I don't have an easy way to check the date of the last issue I acquired. By the end, it was basically just the Amtrak and VIA national timetables with some highly condensed commuter schedules. (The freight edition of the Guide, BTW, still exists.)

Regarding a contemporary revival, the problem is that someone would have to pay for it. The National Railway Publication Company, which produced the original Guide, was a for-profit company that made its money from paid subscriptions, advertising, and the money that it charged railroads for enhanced listings. Given that rail schedules are universally available for free on the Internet these days, I think it would be tough for a private company to find enough revenue to support a consolidated web site, much less a book.

Online travel portals are displacing printed schedules. Even the Official Airline Guide isn't as popular as it used to be. And the rail travel market in the US is much smaller than the airline market. The Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable already caters to European gap-year backpackers.

Once upon a time, we had through ticketing in the US. That was back when you needed to ride trains from different railroads to get between certain major cities. Once Amtrak combined the remnants of the long-distance network under one umbrella, this critical need went away.

Yes, you still make connections between commuter trains and Amtrak trains. But except for a few limited situations, practically nobody but railfans would ever do it. Those limited situations (e.g., SEPTA/NJT) are exactly the ones that already have through ticketing. They're also the same situations that Google Transit (and more regional guides such as Trips123) cater to.

M&Eman wrote:Has there ever been impetus to create a modern day National Guide?

Nope. The market is nil and today's travel agents can find the exact same information on the internet.

I just pulled a copy of the Official Guide from April, 1968. To try to even think of bring the guide back would not work. Even
in 1968 more of the commuter operations were not in than were. The New Haven, Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio had
all of their trains listed while the B & M, NYC, EL, CNJ, RDG, LIRR, IC, CNW, MILW, SP and CNR had lots of trains listed but
did not include their commuter train operations. What good would something like this be?
We can get the information by internet and if you do not use the internet, you can still get it by mail if you are not in a hurry
for the information.
By 1968 the guide had shrunk drastically due to fewer trains and fewer listings. Earlier years had commuter trains listed for
much more than in 1968. By 1968 some of the railroads were more interested in listing their freight schedules than their passenger schedules.
Prices for the guide in 1968 were $39.00 a year or $5.00 a copy. If I had an extensive trip in the works I would go to their
office in New York and buy a single copy as timetables were sometimes hard to come by and maybe not in date either.
Today old copies of the Official Guide are worth money and are good collector's items.
Noel Weaver

It would seem that this would be a more likely project for an enthusiast to undertake, basically hosting a domain and then downloading the assorted PDFs of Amtrak, VIA, and the commuter agencies and reposting them for downloading (assuming that's legal).

The trick would be keeping it current, and possibly annotating maps so as better show the commuter agencies in relation to the national network.

When i travelled in north america , i used Thomas cooks overseas timetable . it gave some idea of bus services etc , even though i would travel by amtrak if possible . it also listed major commter lines like caltrain .
I would think that it would be worthwhile to have a link to commuter railroads on the relevant amtrak timetables for major cities . but it think the only ones buying a national guide would be railfans and collectors .

As an aside note, as I recall, even in the heyday of the Official Guide the Chicago railroads did not show their suburban schedules in the Guide, except for relatively minor services like those of the Wabash, Pennsylvania, and GM&O. As Tom Nelligan notes, financial success would require subscribers, rail operators, and advertisers to support it, and that doesn't look like happening.

In the next few years, Google or someone else may have enough transit systems in their database to be essentially a modern Official Guide. For example, Google can give you directions to take commuter trains from Wilmington, DE to New Haven, CT: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... =9&start=0
It doesn't have Amtrak yet, though its schedules are relatively simple enough that even without Amtrak's cooperation it could be added. It's the local bus systems that really need cooperation because of details such as stopping places that aren't in the schedules.

At the very least the ferderal government should set-up a website like we in the UK have in http://www.transportdirect.info/. This would enable people planning to make a journey on public transport to see the connections available to them and then they can at least have all the options open to them and can make a choice based on that. I would imagine there's a lot of people that are oblivious to the existence of the majority of commuter railroads even if they're aware of Amtrak.

Amtrak's 2009-2010 system timetable lists for the northeast, on page 25 the web and telephone numbers for transit agencies by city/region for commuter rail and transit systems. 19 or 20 of them. On page 33 are the complete NJT Atlantic City - Philadelphia schdules. Lots of pages for other areas of the country have local transit contact info. So it is relatively comprehensive as of now.

Link to system timetable on: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentSe ... 7405732505

Ken W2KB wrote:Amtrak's 2009-2010 system timetable lists for the northeast, on page 25 the web and telephone numbers for transit agencies by city/region for commuter rail and transit systems. 19 or 20 of them. On page 33 are the complete NJT Atlantic City - Philadelphia schdules. Lots of pages for other areas of the country have local transit contact info. So it is relatively comprehensive as of now.

The comprehensive yard stick would be the Swiss Official Timetable, available in two volumes 1. Railways, funiculars, cable cars, lifts, and boats & 2. Buses. Both volumes combined come to about 3.5 inches thick and only approx $10 for a years worth of travel opportunity. Anything else is just poor in comparison.

Online version http://www.fahrplanfelder.ch/

This may be a reflection of the intensity with which the Swiss use their rail system -- and it is an integrated system, for all that there are very many different operators involved. Many Swiss forgo owning an automobile, choosing instead to buy the System annual pass on which they can ride everywhere for an entire year. In contrast, I don't even like to contemplate what percentage of Americans think of going somewhere by train, let alone so often that they would want to have a comprehensive guide available. Even the French National Railways informed the French public some years ago that nobody needed a printed railway guide anymore and leaflets and the web would suffice.

The closest thing to a National Railway Timetable that I have come across for the US is the US section of the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable, though it is a just a bit too abstract for any detailed use. But it does contain all rail service in the US in a reasonably useful form and with pointers to the agencies from where more detailed information can be obtained if needed.