Jackie Robinson Special-N&W?

[NW Mailing List]

On Jul 8, 2010, at 6:11 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
I  have been following the rebroadcast of PBS' American Experience/  
Ken Burns Baseball.  In the most recent segment featuring the Jackie  
Robinson story, fleeting mention is made of the "Jackie Robinson  
Special", a train running in the 1947 season from Norfolk to  
Cincinnati for Robinson fans delirious over Jackie's having been  
signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers that year, the first African-American  
admitted to major league baseball.  Years before in the Negro Leagues  
Jackie had played on the Norfolk team.  The "special" ran when the  
Dodgers played at Cincinnati.

Sounds like the rail protagonist was the N&W, end to end.  Can anyone  
confirm?

Has the story ever appeared in The Arrow?  If not, isn't it time that  
it did?

I'd be glad to work on recovering the story, or collaborate with  
others.  Anyone know where details might be uncovered?  Perhaps news  
stories in the Norfolk and Cincinnati newspapers, for a start?  Any  
Norfolk and Cincinnati people care to inquire?

I googled what I could, and found--again,  just a passing reference-- 
a note (p. 196) in Jules Tygiel's "Baseball's Great Experiment-- 
Jackie Robinson and His Legacy", 1997 (revised edition), printed on  
occasion of the 50th anniversary of Robinson's breaking the color  
barrier in the national sport.

So anyone with info or pointers for research, do speak up!

Frank Gibson

Frank

Since I've seen no response to your inquiry of now 2 months ago, I  
thought you might benefit from the following. I suspect the lack of  
response shows a general lack of knowledge or information on the  
specific question. So I thought I'd pass on my thoughts. You may have  
to do some serious detective work, so I did some of the research, as  
it did kind of intrigue me. I started this a long time ago, but did  
not send it like I thought, so my apologies for the overlong  
dissertation. As you will see, this is not going to be an easy answer  
question. I've done some of the research and gone into some detail  
here. Having been involved in planning of long distance excursion  
trains in the modern era, I feel some of that experience factors in.

While the story itself may be interesting, it sounds that it might  
simply be a short story, not much more. This is, so far, what I  
consider anecdotal history, or nothing to document it other than word  
of mouth. I do not have the book you referenced, so I can't really  
speak to the author's source, but it may indeed have been anecdotal  
as well.

I've done a good bit of the digging for you, after you read the  
following, if you still think there might be a story you will want to  
pursue further it will probably take some time.

In general,  anecdotal history, is simply history passed down through  
time, just because it sounds like it should be the case, in some  
people's mind, it must have been, but reality can often be totally  
different. A number of publishers are less than concerned with  
accuracy, their interest is in getting a product to market, facts and  
correct information are not important.

I know nothing about the book you cited, and I'm not really  
interested enough to purchase a copy of the book cited to check it  
out, and none of the local libraries have it.

Rather than spend weeks searching through the Norfolk newspapers  
which may yield nothing. First you should have a look at the reality  
and speculate to what might have been done at the time. Some of my  
thoughts are:

If this special did run, it could have been either the C&O or the  
N&W, both served the tidewater area and Cincinnati. The C&O served  
Norfolk, while technically ending at Newport News, the C&O did have a  
Norfolk station at one time which was only connected via ferry or  
later a bus. The C&O would serve a slightly larger population base  
along the way, however.

Passenger specials were common in the steam era and on up until the  
mid 1960s. I doubt you are going to find anyone who might have been  
involved in the planning, or scheduling of any such train, as we are  
now talking 63 years ago, at least that might remember any specifics.  
I'm not aware of the existence of any company files on excursion  
trains from that era, as most of the passenger department files  
seemed to have been tossed out after the end of service in 1971.

The N&W regularly ran baseball specials to Cincinnati, usually from  
Bluefield or Williamson and west to Cincinnati, the C&O ran specials  
as well, most running from Charleston or Huntington, but on at least  
one occasion from Clifton Forge. Cincinnati was a great destination  
for both roads, as the original Crosley Field was within reasonable  
walking distance of Cincinnati Union Terminal. In fact, the June 1947  
N&W Magazine had a feature story on the first post war excursion  
train, a baseball special from Bluefield to Cincinnati, consisting of  
sixteen coaches and a single diner. The article did not give a full  
schedule unfortunately.

This special was for a doubleheader with the Boston Braves on Sunday,  
May 18, 1947. According the article, the train left Bluefield at 9:30  
pm on the 17th with 103 passengers on board, added 127 at Welch, 131  
at Williamson, 34 at Kenova and finally 83 at Portsmouth. Between  
Bluefield and Portsmouth, the special stopped at most of the local  
stops along the way adding passengers at every place, adding an  
additional 215 enroute at the local stops. The train finally arrived  
at Cincinnati with a full load of 693 passengers. Running,  
essentially as a local from Bluefield to Portsmouth, the schedule was  
slow working passengers at every stop. That is an average of 57.75  
riders per coach, pretty efficient transportation. Riders came from  
all around the region according to the article, Pocahontas,  
Richlands, Bossevain, etc. etc. I'd hazard a guess that arrival in  
Cincinnati was somewhere around 11 am.

Not everyone on board went to the games, it was reported that some  
went to visit relatives, others went to the zoo.  Regardless, as you  
can see, baseball was a very popular sport in the coal country. These  
specials were an easy way to generate some additional passenger  
business with just a little extra effort. 1947 was still a fairly  
busy passenger year after the war.

By the way, the Reds split the doubleheader with the Braves. Some  
24,432 fans attended. From the photo in the N&W Magazine, it was  
obviously a day game.

According to the schedule (Baseball Almanac) I found, Brooklyn played  
at Cincinnati on three different occasions during the 1947 season:

Tuesday, 05-13-1947
Wednesday, 05-14-1947

Saturday, 06-21-1947
Sunday, 06-22-1947, Double Header

Sunday, 09-14-1947 Double Header
Tuesday, 09-16-1947

The most logical assumptions would be the two doubleheaders, the  
first on Sunday, June 22, or second September 14. Cincinnati was the  
first place to install lights for night play, playing the first game  
under the lights in 1935. So I do not know if these games were day or  
night, it certainly seems likely that the both double headers were  
day games, as it was a Sunday.

I went through the entire year of 1947 N&W Magazines, and could find  
no mention of any Jackie Robinson Special. I was not surprised by  
that, as I said, excursions were fairly common at the time and only  
occasionally when it was unusual or really special, were they  
reported in the Magazine.

Now as far as a train ride from Norfolk to Cincinnati and return, it  
is a long ride, over 600 miles by rail.
By my April 1947 timetable, No. 3, the Pocahontas left Norfolk at  
2:40 pm with arrival in Cincinnati at 8:10 am, running time of 17  
hours and 50 minutes.
The Powhatan Arrow, No. 25 departed at 7:30 am, arrival at 11 pm,  
running time of 15 hours, 10 minutes.
No. 15, The Cavalier, leaving Norfolk at 11 pm, arrival at Cincinnati  
7:50 pm, running time of 20 hours and 50 minutes.

No. 3 and No. 15 both were worked with mail and express in between  
points, cutting cars in and out, slowing the schedule. The Arrow was  
a shorter train, 6-8 cars (at that time) with much more limited stops  
and no mail and express or sleepers. Mostly lightweight equipment as  
well. But if this alleged special was like the other baseball special  
mentioned above, it did a lot of local stopping. Since it was likely  
to be a coach train with a diner, it would likely have been 16 of the  
heavyweight, 1600 series PG coaches and a De diner.

With a heavier train, and many local stops, the special would  
certainly not be able to make the Arrow's schedule.

So, with averaging out the time, lets give a special train a running  
time somewhere between the Pocahontas and the Cavalier, so lets call  
it about 19.5 hours running time, each way. That would include time  
for local rider handling, plus time to add or remove a diner in  
Roanoke. Lets add an hour in Cincinnati for time to get to the game.  
I don't know what time of day the games were scheduled for, but  
usually today it is around 2 PM. Since you really can't cut the  
schedule too close due to possible delays, even with "Precision  
Transportation" you better plan on arrival in Cincinnati at least 3  
hours ahead of schedule, so the arrival is 11 AM so, now you have to  
back time from Norfolk to leave at 4:30 pm the day before. Then you  
have to have some time to allow for extra innings games, so you might  
get back and loaded to roll from Union Station at 7 or so, which  
means you are back into Norfolk at somewhere around 2 the next  
afternoon. That is a really long trip, and without sleepers, a VERY  
long coach ride overnight.

So it seems most likely it might be an overnight outing, complicating  
the arrangements, with hotels, which may well easily eliminate the  
railroad's involvement.

The C&O did not have a better schedule, with connections to ride No.  
1, The George Washington would have a total time of about 18 hours  
and 20 minutes, No. 3 the FFV was a bit slower with a total time of  
about 19 hours and 50 minutes. Now bear in mind, these were  
connections from Newport News to the mainline at Charlottesville, so  
these are not straight running times. I did not have handy a 1947 C&O  
timetable, so those times may be a bit off. But regardless, I'd say  
that any C&O trip would easily be somewhat longer than the N&W.

Now on to the facts of the baseball side, at least according to what  
I have found, the Norfolk Tars were a New York Yankee farm team in  
1944-1946, but they played in the Piedmont league. To tie this back  
to the railroad, Roanoke also fielded a team, the Roanoke Red Sox in  
the Piedmont League at that time. Jackie played only 45 games in the  
negro leagues, that was for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. He had  
been in the US Army prior to that. In 1946, he was signed to the  
Brooklyn Dodgers and assigned to their farm team in Montreal. Norfolk  
did not have a team in the International League in 1946.  Since  
baseball (and the south) was still widely segregated, I sort of doubt  
that anything other than an exhibition game may have been played in  
the Norfolk area which would likely have had to have been the Kansas  
City Monarchs against some other team (I'd say most likely another  
black team), as apparently it was a popular area for baseball. Where  
they would play, I'm not certain.

I'd be curious to know why Jackie Robinson would have had any greater  
following in the Norfolk area than other places, since he was not  
from that area and, at least from what I've seen, did appear to play  
there.

Now, as far as how to find information on any special train. That is  
going to require some real  time and effort, and even with that, you  
may or may not find anything. The N&W and others usually printed up  
flyers that would be hung at various stations along the way for  
special trains. By no means do I have a really good collection of  
those flyers, I've seen ones for other baseball specials, including  
one to see Babe Ruth play in an exhibition game. But not one in this  
specific case.

In my opinion, this trip does not seem to be a really likely  
scenario, mainly due to the list of things above. I'm not saying it  
didn't, I'd be glad to see some evidence that it did, I just think it  
will be difficult at best, possibly even next to impossible to find  
if it was real, or just anecdotal history. If I was planning on  
researching this, I'd start by searching the Norfolk newspaper,  
looking for ads for a trip in April and May or even early June, or  
August and September of 1947. Unfortunately, to my searching, the  
Norfolk, Roanoke, Lynchburg or Cincinnati papers are not available  
online that I can find. It might have been mentioned in the  
CIncinnati paper after the fact. Other places I'd try would be the  
Lynchburg and Roanoke papers, but I just feel like it will be chasing  
a ghost, that may prove to find nothing. There is absolutely no  
guarantee of the trip being advertised in the paper either,  
advertising costs money, and will cut into the potential profits, the  
N&W seems to have rarely advertised for such specific things, at  
least by this time period.


Best
Ken Miller
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