Passenger Conductors, Money and Tickets

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

Recently I was discussing with my son the fact that, on the N&W, passenger brakemen did not handle money or tickets.  These were duties of the Conductor only.

Understandable, given the nature of the operation.  Ridership wasn't that heavy (compared to the routes on some other roads,) stations were relatively far apart, affording time for "the lift" of tickets by one person.  N&W certainly didn't operate commuter trains.

Son and I were comparing this to the nature of the game on roads which operated commuter service into the big cities, where each Conductor and brakeman "worked" only two or three cars, where trains might stop at ten or twelve places on a 45 minute run into or out of the city, and where a "swing brakeman" was sometimes used for only a portion of the run, to assist with "the lift."

Any thoughts from the other Listers about the thing we saw fifty years ago on the N&W (and/or other roads) in this regard?

-- abram burnett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20060312/c2642b5c/attachment.html