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Re: (erielack) A question about through sleeping cars

  
  


In 1958 the NYCentral System used telephones and teletype. The main
reservations bureau was in GCT, NY, in an office above the (current)
west ticket windows. There were double hung windows in this office
which opened into the terminal floor, and the interior could be easily
seen from the west staircase and platform. Inside was a large revolving
drum about 20' in diameter with 3 or 4 vertical rows of pigeon
holes/slots. In each was a loose leaf notebook. I surmised that each
was a train for perhaps a week or month, and sheets of paper in the
notebook were for each uniquely numbered car with varying space in the
train. The clerks sat around the perimeter of the slowly revolving drum
with headsets. They would get calls from a station agent for, say, 1
roomette on train 26 Harmon to Chicago. The reservations clerk would
then watch the revolving drum until the notebook for train 26 on the
requested date reached him/her, then remove the notebook, find the
proper page and assign the space, writing in the requesting agent and
ticket number (I am guessing.) Then he replaced the book in its proper
pigeon hole. Cancellations would be the reverse. A given number of
hours before the departure of the train, the page would be withdrawn
and a manifest typed up for the conductor. 



Notice the similarity to a computer data base. The records were stored
by 1) accomodation, 2) car number, 3) train number, 4) date. When the
book was removed, the record was "locked" preventing another agent from
inadvertently updating the same space "record." When the book was
updated and replaced, the train record was "unlocked" and available for
another space request. 



E-L content? Perhaps the Hoboken-Detroit sleeper was represented in
this NYC data base. I would watch this reservation process often
especially in the Summer when the windows were wide open. I later gave
this example to community college classes I taught in data base theory
so they could picture the basic concepts of computer data bases like
Access, dBase, SQL, etc.

Joel McEachen




  >From Archives_@_Railfan.net
Message-ID: <410-220065071164875_@_earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 21:16:04 -0400
From: "Philip Martin" <martinpl3_@_earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (erielack) A question about through sleeping cars

The Pennsy used teletype, called the Intelex system.  I don't have any
recollection of how it worked, other than that we typed the reservations
into it.  We may have had racks showing space available on varionus trains,
on various days.  I worked in the reservation bureau, on the 7th Ave. side
of the old Penn Station, for a few months, from the end of 1956 until it
closed.  Then we went downstairs, to what is now the seating area in the
main coucourse; but was then the brand new ticket office, in the brand new
(ugh) station; and used little TV monitors to reserve space.  I still
remember some of the abreviations we used in the Intelex system: NKO for
Newark, Ohio, but we used it for Newark, NJ; WDC for Washington, and PHA
for Philadelphia.  
Philip Martin

  
  
    That all makes sense, but we are looking at the age of PRE-computers.  
    
  
  Just wondering how a central bureau
worked in 1954? Via Phone? Via TeleType?





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