Passenger Train Consists Lynchburg-Bristol

Thu Feb 8 12:06:37 EST 2024

 Dan - At the archives in Hollinger box HOL-00532.28 is an ICC Railroad Accident Investigation for an incident at Wallace, VA on Oct. 30, 1953.  These reports sometimes include a diagram showing derailed equipment by initial and name or number.  From memory, this may have involved Radford Div. Train No. 10, which was usually powered by  Class J   and provided mail and express service to local stations Monroe to Bristol with three cars.  Archives also has a CD showing ICC accident reports 1914-1964 for the N&W. 
    On Wednesday, February 7, 2024 at 03:39:01 PM EST, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  

 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
> ________________________________________
> NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org
> To change your subscription go to
> http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list
> Browse the NW-Mailing-List archives at
> http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/

________________________________________
NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org
To change your subscription go to
http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list
Browse the NW-Mailing-List archives at
http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/

________________________________________
NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org
To change your subscription go to
http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list
Browse the NW-Mailing-List archives at
http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20240208/50493eca/attachment-0001.htm>