Quality of Passenger Service on the N&W

[NW Mailing List]

Mike,

I rode N&W passenger trains numerous times in the early 1950's when service was still a matter of pride with the railroad and its employees.  I rode the Pocahontas and the Powhatan Arrow (equipped with the round-end observation car) on many trips between Bluefield, WV, and Berea College on the L&N in Kentucky (via Cincinnati).  Summers I rode N&W trains east of Bluefield to and from summer jobs that I had at several points on the N&W.  Additionally, in that time period I rode N&W trains on the Clinch Valley line, the Durham line, the Bristol line and the Winston-Salem line, along with trips on the C&O and Southern.

In addition to the Powhatan Arrow's observation car, the Arrow had a passenger service representative to look after passenger needs, and this person and the other crew members were friendly, professional and solicitous of the passengers' needs.  This was in contrast to a trip I had on a PRR train from Pittsburgh to Altoona in the same time period in which two boisterous crew members parked themselves in the lounge car where I was riding and proceeded to loudly and derisively ridicule the scenic attraction of Horseshoe Curve as we approached it.

My experience with Amtrak is too limited to make a comparison between past N&W trains and Amtrak, but the N&W trains that I rode, and the tracks that they ran on, compared favorable with the other railroads' trains, and tracks, that I rode on.  The N&W trains generally ran on time.

Considering track, one summer when I was working at the N&W's Durham, NC, shop (all steam then) a PRR clearance car, "porcupine car," laid over in the shop area after checking clearances from Lynchburg to Durham, and one of the PRR technicians manning the car told me that the N&W had better track on the Lynchburg-Durham branch line than anywhere on the PRR outside of the Washington-New York line (today's Northeast Corridor.

I rode good C&O trains between Hinton, WV, in the east and Cincinnati, OH, or Lexington, KY in the west.  In fact, some frequent travelers in the Princeton/Bluefield area preferred to drive to Hinton to take a sleeper on the C&O to Cincinnati instead of a sleeper on the N&W out of Bluefield because they claimed that they could sleep better on the C&O's more gentle curves following New River than on the N&W's many curves following Tug River.  Personally, I did not find any problems riding coach class on the N&W along Tug River, even on overnight trains.

Between Cincinnati and Berea I would ride the L&N's Southland or Flamingo.  The coaches on these trains were generally older L&N or Cof G heavy coaches that had been modernized with air conditioning and reclining seats.  The track was not quite so smooth as on the N&W, but the ride was not objectionable.  The modern N&W cars rode smoother and were less noisy.

Gordon Hamilton
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 6:56 PM
  Subject: Quality of Passenger Service on the N&W


  What was the quality of passenger service on N&W compared to Amtrak today? For example, did the trains run on time, were you treated well as a passenger?


  Mike Weeks
  Greenville NC


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