Passenger train competition

After WW-II, where was the only competition for the New Haven Railroad's passenger service? I will answer that, between New York (GCT) and Pittsfield, Mass. Both the New York Central Harlem Division and the New Haven had through passenger service between New York and Pittsfield until 1950 or so. In the summer of 1949 there were two trains weekdays between the two points, the New York Central trains continued on from Pittsfield to North Adams.
In some respects the service was better on the New Haven while in other respects it was better on the New York Central.
On Sundays in the summer of 1949 there were 5 afternoon trains from Pittsfield to New York, 3 on the New Haven and 2 on the Central. On the New Haven train 145 made it in 4 hours and 15 minutes with 22 stops, 147 in 4 hours and 6 minutes with 16 stops and 149 in an even 4 hours with 12 stops. Train 149 ran non stop from Danbury to 125th Street.
On the Central train 54 made it in 4 hours and 5 minutes with 13 stops while 72 made it in 4 hours and 1 minute with 11 stops. Both of the above Central trains ran non stop from Pawling to North White Plains. Most of the trains featured diner or diner lounge cars and parlor cars as well.
Saturday had a train on the Central at 12:35 PM and the New Haven at 12:45 PM, they arrived Pittsfield at the same time 5:00 PM and both had diners as well.
The normal Monday - Friday trains consisted of two in each direction and were quite a bit slower than the weekend trains. Both weekday round trips handled lots of mail and express and had an RPO as well, they stopped everywhere even in some cases that were not shown in the public timetables for mail.
In the same summer of 1949 the Central had two additional round trips weekdays out of Chatham and even more on Sundays, they kept the rails shiny in those days. How about the mileage? 154 on the New Haven and 154 on the Central.
Even in later days it was a fun trip to ride 138 to Pittsfield on a Sunday, take 405 to Chatham and back to New York on one of the two Sunday afternoon trains. I could always fit in lunch at either Pittsfield or Chatham, both had good food available even though by this time the trains no longer had diners on them.
Of course I rode on a pass but the OW fare on the New Haven to Pittsfield in 1949 was $4.32, I do not know what the fare was on the Central but I'll bet it was pretty close to the same figure. Even after the New Haven had cut the train service to Pittsfield down to two round trips a week one could buy a round trip from New York to Pittsfield on a one day round trip basis on Sundays for $4.90 which was probably the best deal in New York for a train ride. We used to get quite a few railfans and others doing this on Sundays. I guess the NHRR figured that even at a cheap fare, it was better to have bodies in the seats than spaces in the seats.
More memories.
Noel Weaver

Noel, thanks for that trip in the "wayback machine." Do you think there's any hope for service NYC to the Berkshires in the future?

Ocala Mike wrote:Noel, thanks for that trip in the "wayback machine." Do you think there's any hope for service NYC to the Berkshires in the future?

I rather doubt it anytime soon. The Housatonic is just looking for state or federal money to put on passenger service between Danbury and Pittsfield and I don't think that will happen. In addition the Housatonic has neither the people, equipment nor the organization to operate such service anyway.
You might see Metro-North service extended north to Pittsfield sometime if Connecticut can ever get its act together. As far as the territory north is concerned, a bus connection from Wassaic north to Millerton, Great Barrington and Pittsfield would work out as well at a lot less cost, this could and probably should happen in the not too distant future.
Even with the high price of gasoline and bound to go even higher, we are still in an automobile oriented society when it comes to pleasure trips in the country and that is not likely to change.
Noel Weaver

New Milford for sure sometime in the future. The US 7 expressway was due to continue north to New Milford. Stalled in the early-80's, and a renewed push in the late-90's for boulevard-level upgrades that was greenlit in '98 full-speed ahead and then fell apart around 2002. There's still a lot of support for it, but obstacles make it a no-go and it's pretty much been scrubbed off the 20-year highway plan. The MNRR extension's seen as the "best of the rest" mitigation for congestion with the highway improvements pretty much impossible and a pretty good one when CDOT rail project backlog abates enough to mount it.

There's no reason to continue north, though. The ROW travels through a whole lot of forest for 35 miles between New Miflord and Canaan, paralleling a portion of 7 that's 2-lane and light traffic while swerving away from what little population is in the area to hug the Housantonic river. State line to Great Barrington is just as desolate, then the ROW does that wild east swing along the river that misses some more population before going up to Pittsfield. It's just too remote. Beautiful country and excellent tourist railroad potential, but the corridor past New Milford is essentially a narrow 70-mile north/south population vacuum.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:State line to Great Barrington is just as desolate, then the ROW does that wild east swing along the river that misses some more population before going up to Pittsfield. It's just too remote. Beautiful country and excellent tourist railroad potential, but the corridor past New Milford is essentially a narrow 70-mile north/south population vacuum.

I'm not too sure about that. I think there are enough carless or one-car New York families who vacation in the Berkshires that a GCT-Pittsfield service could work, at least in the summer months. After all, weekend-only service lasted right up until A-day.

Noel- When did the New Haven pull the dining cars from Berkshire service? I remember when I was a kid in the late '70s our neighbor in West Redding used to talk about how nice it was to have a diner and parlor cars on the train to NY...

I think Kent would warrant a stop. Don't know much about the rest of the area. To tell you the truth, the sparseness of the area might actually argue for Pittsfield service, as past Danbury, there are only three stops proposed in the study: Danbury North (excellent parking, around the 84/7 interchange); Brookfield, and New Milford. With one stop in Kent, and one in Canaan, that's a whole lot of open territory not being eaten up by passenger stops. Not sure what historical stops there were; Bulls Bridge??? One of the issues with operating time on the Danbury branch is the number of stops.

I agree with Noel; HRRC's motivation is money; passenger service would be a loss leader for improved track conditions for running freight.

A decent faciliy in New Milford would do nicely for this operation. Kent is tiny and in addition is not that far from the Harlem with much better service than Danbury has. I don't think Kent would generate much at all on a run like this.
I don't know if there if there is anyplace around New Milford for a decent park and ride facility but I suspect they could find one if they try.
Noel Weaver

That's true on Kent. New Milford has two pretty good parking lots on both sides of the track already, and if they needed more I suppose they could add a deck, although at least at first they would not need it. The real plus, and something they should just go ahead and do, would be a station at Danbury North.

Noel Weaver wrote:

Ocala Mike wrote:Noel, thanks for that trip in the "wayback machine." Do you think there's any hope for service NYC to the Berkshires in the future?

Even with the high price of gasoline and bound to go even higher, we are still in an automobile oriented society when it comes to pleasure trips in the country and that is not likely to change.
Noel Weaver

I don't know about that, with gas seemingly headed to at least $4.00/gallon, driving being a general pain and the deplorable condition of many of our roads ( with no money to fix them) we may see a shift in attitudes in this country.

Cars are popular because they are cheap to run and convenient enabling you to go where you want went you want, which outweighed the PIA of driving such as break downs and being stuck in traffic. Owning and driving a car is getting more expensive every year, for many insurance rates are going up, the cost of cars has been rising far faster then wages, and fuel seems destined to stay above $3.00/gallon. I think many Americans are falling out of love with the ever increasing cost of driving.

If ticket prices become less then the cost of gas and car sharing like zip car, or car rentals like enterprise making it fairly easy to get transport for the last mile of your trip, I think we will see shifting attitudes towards mass forms of ground transportation. High fuel prices are leading to an increase in freight traffic, why not an increase in passenger traffic along with new routes to support the demand. While I have no data to back that claim up one does not have to browse the site for very long to see that freight traffic is up old lines are coming back to live and Amtrak is posting year over year increases and possibly some record ridership numbers.

I can relate to this but in this case the population and potential is simply not there. There was too little business for the New Haven to run even a single Budd Car back in the 60's and eventually the bus company could not make it running a couple of round trips a day. Maybe a bus to Danbury or New Milford or to the nearest Harlem Line station which appears to me to be Wingdale maybe 10 or 12 miles to the west.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see passenger service back on the Berkshire but I simply do not think it would be practical and it would be very costly to get it started. Maybe a bus would work but I am not even sure there would be enough business for a bus through Kent on a regular basis. Perhaps a jitney transfer between Kent and Wingdale a couple of times a day. Incidentally the population of Kent is a little over 2800.
Noel Weaver

Noel Weaver wrote:Incidentally the population of Kent is a little over 2800.
Noel Weaver

It's true the population is small but you also have a built-in ridership market for public transportation in the form of the Kent School and South Kent School. Kent is also a pretty major hiking center, at least in the summer months. And you'd likely draw ridership from Warren and the southern part of Cornwall, as well (yes, yes, I know that doesn't make Kent exactly a metropolis but...)

Business might have been bad in the '60s, but couldnt part of that have been due to a terrible schedule? If I remember correctly, after the New Haven lost the mail contract, a weekday trip to Pittsfield required changing trains twice, at both South Norwalk and Danbury. What was ridership like in the late '50s, when the service was still decent? After all, the road network in Northwestern Connecticut is about the same now as it was in 1950, with the exception of I-84 through Danbury.

Ridgefielder wrote:

Noel Weaver wrote:Incidentally the population of Kent is a little over 2800.
Noel Weaver

It's true the population is small but you also have a built-in ridership market for public transportation in the form of the Kent School and South Kent School. Kent is also a pretty major hiking center, at least in the summer months. And you'd likely draw ridership from Warren and the southern part of Cornwall, as well (yes, yes, I know that doesn't make Kent exactly a metropolis but...)

Business might have been bad in the '60s, but couldnt part of that have been due to a terrible schedule? If I remember correctly, after the New Haven lost the mail contract, a weekday trip to Pittsfield required changing trains twice, at both South Norwalk and Danbury. What was ridership like in the late '50s, when the service was still decent? After all, the road network in Northwestern Connecticut is about the same now as it was in 1950, with the exception of I-84 through Danbury.

During the New Haven days, the only change required between New York and Pittsfield occurred after Budd Cars were substituted for standard equipment north of Danbury in the early 60's. It was not a difficult change, just across the platform. It was a terrible schedule????? I don't see how, a morning train out of both New York and Pittsfield and an early afternoon return from Pittsfield and a late afternoon return from New York. There was simply not enough on this line even then to warrant more trains. There was additional trains on weekends when the ridership was higher.
Looking back today it is probably a wonder that the service such as it was lasted as long as it did.
Noel Weaver

When I was a teen-aged toad back in the early 50's, I vividly remember the Danbury station on summer Sunday evenings .... my parents and I lived In Stratford but all our relatives were in Danbury; the weekly drive to/from was the high point of the week for this already foaming railfan, ESPECIALLY if our Danbury departure for home was around 9:15 pm. Even my dad, and to a slightly lesser degree my mom, seemed to enjoy the half-hour hiatus in the usually crowded Danbury railroad station parking lot. First in (around 9:30) was the 3-passenger car northbound local from GCT; electric off, diesel on and outta there. A few minutes later the southbound HOUSATONIC would round the sharp curve and come to a halt; often with ten passenger cars in tow (seemingly packed to the gills) and even a parlor (with "Broiler Buffet"). Diesel(s) off, electric on and outta there (non-stop to 125th St). Occasionally we'd head back home earlier, maybe around 7:30 but that was semi-OK 'cuz at least I'd get to scope the southbound LITCHFIELD; 10-cars or more with a parlor AND diner and if anything, even more super-crowded than the HOUSATONIC ..... diesel(s) off, electric on and gone. The ridership north of Danbury was certainly there back THEN; at least on summer Sunday evenings.

I remember relatively late in the game, 1965 or '66, the New Haven still operated a Sunday-only through train from GCT to Pittsfield. A single FL-9 and a few coaches. It made a stop at Port Chester which is where I would see it. Back then maybe the only FL-9 powered train to serve Port Chester.

Would Pittsfield service be feasible today? Probably. But there is no profit incentive, you would need to have a source of capital for investment and an operating subsidy.

I'd be for it but a lot of other people won't. People are beginning to question the cost of establishing rail service. With the current state of the economy, people are beginning to ask, since government has to maintain roads should we also be spending public money on providing a rail alternative? Can the taxpayer afford to fund both? Nice to have both but is it a prudent choice?

Times are changing folks. I think the big surge in expanded rail passenger service we've seen over the past thirty years may be drawing to a close. I can think a lot of reasons why rail still makes sense but unfortuately we live in a democracy. The majority also has to agree.

I had 140/138 seven days a week firing out of GCT in maybe 1966 and at that time 140 stopped at New Rochelle, Port Chester, Stamford, Darien and South Norwalk while 138 on Sunday made stops at Greenwich, Stamford and South Norwalk.
I don't think there was any additional stops on the main line with 138 at least during the 50's or 60's, I will check later on but it seems to me that Greenwich and Stamford were it. There were several New Haven trains with FL-9's that stopped at Port Chester during the 60's, I will again check on that one too but several numbers come to mind both east and west.
It certainally was a very unique trip even in the mid to late 60's. I don't think we will ever see that again.
Noel Weaver