Passenger Train Consists Lynchburg-Bristol

[NW Mailing List]

Dear Ken and Jim,

Thanks for the warm welcome and for your comments on the dispatcher sheets.
My interest in these trains are twofold:

1. Understanding what Pullman cars were in service on these trains in the
1920s - 1940s. Southern Railway public timetables do a good job of listing
exactly what types of cars were used, but specific car names that would
have appeared on a particular Pullman car line are harder to find.

2. Understanding how the streamlined Tennessean consists delivered in 1941
evolved from 1941-1949, particularly how the *Tennessean* cars intermingled
with the Southern Railway *Southerner *cars (largely identical
Pullman-Standard cars also delivered in 1941). I am fortunate to have
several *Southerner *consists showing that many of the cars originally
assigned to the Tennessean were used in the *Southerner *pool, but I have
not seen evidence of the opposite. I was hoping that N&W records for the
Lynchburg-Bristol segment might show some of the *Tennessean* consists.
Southern Railway dispatcher sheets are also difficult to find.

In any event, I'm glad to be here and look forward to more discussions of
N&W passenger trains.

Dan Miller

On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 12:30 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> Hi Dan
>
> Welcome!
>
> The archives collection is only as good as the materials we get.
> Unfortunately, it seems likely, that the dispatchers train sheets were long
> since tossed away, probably in the 1960s for anything prior to 1960. Very
> likely, nobody thought to save them at the time. The dispatcher sheets
> would not give you consists regardless, only an engine number, and crew
> members and times on station. This is a sad fact of the era, while we would
> love to have dispatcher sheets of the steam era, they are few and far
> between. In all my years of collecting, I’ve not seen the first one.
>
> Where you might (and I emphasize, might!) is in the conductor’s books or
> telegraphic reports of passenger trains. Once again, these are kind of
> scarce and the records are sometimes less than ideal. It depended greatly
> on the conductor keeping a detailed record of his consist. I’ve studied a
> wide variety of these books over the years, and it is indeed a mixed bag,
> some folks kept poor records, recording only the minimum of train number,
> locomotive number, engineer, fireman conductor and trainman plus time
> reported and time off, others did record the consist. Sometimes the writing
> is poor, done in pencil, and dirty pages. All that makes for hard to read
> records. In my collection, I’ve got books from all over the road and VGN,
> dating from the 1920 era on up, but it is hard to find some specifics, and
> details like you are looking for.
>
> The archives has a fair collection of conductor’s books, none have been
> scanned, as they are time consuming to scan, and one really needs to “know
> the territory” to even interpret some of them.
>
> Most of my books tend to be from the late 1950s-1982, but I do recall one
> which might be of some use, it was a conductor working on the Tennessean,
> and he did record consists. As I recall, it is about 1955 or so.
>
> The others at the archives require specific cataloging, and we are always
> open to volunteers, as we do have a shortage of volunteer hours.
>
> Best
> Ken Miller
>
> > On Feb 6, 2024, at 2:30 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Dear List,
> >
> > New member here. Does anyone have access to dispatcher train sheets,
> conductor's logs, or other records of passenger train consists in the 1940s
> between Lynchburg and Bristol? I am looking for Tennessean, Pelican, and
> Birmingham Special consists over the N&W during this time. The dispatcher
> records of train movements that the N&WHS has scanned and made available on
> its website don't appear to cover the 1940s. Any help is appreciated!
> >
> > Dan Miller
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