Re: (rshsdepot) Jim Guthrie's comments

["James R. Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>]

rshsdepot
Seth asked:

> OK.  Now, assistance, please.  Was this a coupon type ticket?  Card
> stock?  Were there separate coupons or cards for each entity.  And,
most

Single ride tickets had multiple coupons; commutation tickets were a
single card a bit alerger than ordinary unrestricted monthlies -- the
color was bright green.
Supplementals were separate tickets.

BTW, I was wrong. Upon reflection, I remember there were three, not
two: East River, North River and Hell Gate.

> important, EXACTLY what was the routing?  LIRR to NYP (New York Penn
> Station) then PRR to Newark?  Surely, they did not use a boat by
then.  I

No boat -- but no ride through the tunnel and NYP either, unless on
had the supplementals. You were on your own between Brooklyn/Queens
and Barclay Street in the case of the E-L, Liberty Street in the case
of the CNJ, or Newark in the case of the PRR, after the H&M was taken
over by the PA.

LIRR passengers to CNJ/EL points found Flatbush Avenue and the 15 cent
token the best route, as going to NYP involved a higher fare and one
still prseumeably paid 15 cents to go downtown to catch the ferry.

<Irrelevant aside>

> would go into the City, enjoy 42nd St. before Disney destroyed that
> wonderful beauty and made it vanilla, and ride any train(s) I could,
> including the Canarsie Line and the two then existing Brooklyn
shuttles.
>
Someday, Disney will have costumed pickpockets and transvestite
hookers in sanitized costumes with oversized heads -- delighting
children by picking daddy's pocket and showing the results -- happily
giving back the loot at Disney's "Old Times Square" area. The only
question in my mind is whether they'll put it in Frontierland or
somewhere else. It'll probably have a trolley before the 42nd St LRT
gets built in any case.

</Irrelevant aside>

> At any rate, I am trying to picture any other routing from LIRR
points to
> Newark, even though, with quite a few LIRR lines, one had to "Change
in
> Jamaica."
>
This discussion started out with my assertion that there were through
coupons that included ferry rides and El Connections, and later H&M
Connections as well.

I checked out the Brooklyn-NJ connecting service -- for those looking
for a citation, check Seyfried's Volume 7 p 206 -- describing the 13
trains a day run from Flatbush Ave to Penn Station for connecting
passengers to PRR points in New Jersey. The service started when the
Annex Boats were discontinued in September 1910 -- 13 trains a day
(reversing at Ozone Park and running non-stop to Penn Station. These
trains were through-ticketed for NJ passengers (at 35 cents a trip),
but the service did not last long, as passengers discovered that for a
nickel and half the time, the IRT worked nicely via the PRR Ferry.

In another of Seth's assertions:

>Again, it was possible to buy through tickets at the ticket office at
>Hudson Terminal, but I assure and guarantee you that you could not
walk up
>to a H&M ticket booth and buy an interline ticket to say, San
Antonio.
>They did not have the ticket stock, and such tickets would have had
to
>have been purchased either at a PRR (or NYC) ticket office or one of
the
>roads from the southwest that maintained a NY City ticket office.

Not only did the H&M "officially" sell interline tickets at all booth,
they also checked baggage at Hudson Terminal, 23rd, and 33rd Street to
all points. You could not check baggage without the interline ticket
to go with it, as I'm sure you well know. One blank-to-blank set of
coupons worked very nicely, thanks. And they had them -- and I've seen
'em.

Seth also asserted:

>As far as discontinuances, tariffs and the like being available in
law
>libraries.  NO!  They might be available in a place like the Newberry
in
>Chicago, but law libraries purge all old material quickly, as it is
>important that they have only current material on hand.  Also, try to
find
>any of the old ICC dockets.  Even when they were in the ICC Building
in DC
>it was near impossible!

Although all tariffs were "Open for Public Inspection" by law at all
open stations in interstate commerce (including the H&M), these were
the enablers of the ticket stock.  I can't believe list folk here
don't all have a couple of these framed babies from various favorite
old stations/railroads on the wall within sight of the computer on
which they're reading this message. I have one from the NYS&W at
Stroudsburg on the wall to my immediate left.

The tariffs were generally thrown in the attic or trash over the
years; I've known few railfans that could read a tariff, let alone
know their value if they had any particular interest in history -- as
opposed to mere collecting of stuff. My favorite freight tariffs, that
I used one year teaching a transport economics course while in grad
school -- was an NYS&W Brimstone Tariff -- that demonstrated exactly
how rates were set and made and preferred routings created on a
subject that could hold the interest of the most dense-minded 'student
athletes.'

The ICC published all of their principal decisions over the years --
literally thousands of volumes. These always went to **every** federal
depository library -- which includes most university libraries.  FCC.
FAA and other quai-judicial agencies did the same, BTW.

In recent years, many libraries have deaccessed some of this material;
I lost a chance at a complete set of ICC books -- 276-odd feet of
shelf space -- for a flat $1,000 (and hauling away) while I dithered
about where to put them in the small house I was then living in. In
any case, all these have been replaced and are still available on
microfiche. I believe the libbrary deal may have included the maritime
Administration, the FAA and the FCC.

The big problem is that the only indexes are chronological -- not by
subject, which makes it a difficult task to do serious research. At
least when the books are "on shelf" one can look volume by volume in
indexes -- but not all cases are under names you'd expect.

In the case of ICC volumes, there are several types -- Finance
Dockets, which generally have railroad operations, Motor Carrier
cases -- which generally cover bus and truck operations, and the
rest -- all on tariffs and rates.

The latter are essential in doing railroad research, because they'll
tell you why freight was routed this way or that, as well as news on
passenger fare increases -- which would include info on such neat
things as where one could purchase a set of NY-Miami all printed with
the imprint of "Herman T. Stichman, Trustee."

Cheers,
Jim

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