New Haven Railroad A fond look back by Andrew J Pavlucik Soft Cover

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The New Haven Railroad A fond look back by Andrew J Pavlucik.

112 pages.

Soft Cover

This book is about how it was when they were running the trains. Lots of photos!

The New Haven for most of its years existed as two railroads. The "public" New Haven, the Company-during most of its history maligned by commuters, assaulted in court battles, and vandalized in print-had little to do with the real New Haven. That Railroad all the time was out putting in a hard day's work running trains.

This book is a celebration of the working New Haven, a remembrance of the years between the middle '20's and the late '40's-the New Haven Years-when the Railroad was in its prime. Those who think of the New Haven mainly in terms of its financial ups and downs will doubtless raise their eyebrows over the author's contention that the '20's, the '30's, and the '40's were the years of the New Haven's greatest flourishing. But that is the whole premise of this book; the reader should be reminded that this history deals with the Railroad of the railroaders, not that of the bankers. The two are easily separated for a history covering these years.

This memento is about the railroadmen, the engines, and the trains-especially the freights-that were the substance of the New Haven. For a railroad its size, the New Haven had a remarkable variety of power in its stables. Considering that the New Haven couldn't afford the luxury of experimental locomotive types which might turn out to be bad investments, its Mechanical Department must certainly be applauded for its inspired approaches to a multitude of design and operational challenges. Some of the Railroad's locomotives were masterpieces: the more the author discovered about the final form that the New Haven's middle 1920's-built heavy Mountain type locomotives took in the R-3a class, the more amazing it seemed that these magnificent locomotives should somehow have been relegated to the far, dark engine stalls of railroad history. The big R's are given their due here.

Another superb New Haven steam locomotive, the 1937-built 1-5 Shore Line type-though somewhat better known than the heavy Mountain type-has also been given short shrift in the annals of locomotive development, but in a different way. The author promised several New Haven operating and mechanical veterans that he would help exorcise a certain myth which had dogged the memory of the I-5 type for nearly four decades.

The New Haven's electric locomotives-passenger and freight-seemed durable enough to be around forever. The electrified district, virtually a railroad within a railroad, saw as much variety in locomotives as did any other division on the Railroad. The New Haven had a strong hand in the design of its electrics, and to study even a few is to trace the evolution of electric locomotive machinery which subsequently became standard on other railroads. Its early diesel-electric road locomotives, too, had a distinctively New Haven character, especially in the unique way the Railroad used them.

It wasn't the author's intention to include all classes and subclasses of locomotives the New Haven operated in the years covered here. As it turned out, most are represented in one way or another, the space allocated to each being determined mainly by the amount of space available. There are excellent near-comprehensive listings available for those interested in tracing renumberings, reclassifications, and histories of specific locomotives, so these pages have not been cluttered with extensive lists and footnotes detailing information of interest mainly to specialists. This history being entirely about the New Haven in life, the reader will not find melancholy chronologies of locomotive scrappings in these pages, either. The assignments of locomotives and rolling stock changed over the years, naturally-in some cases from day to day. There should be no question, though, that during the time recreated in any caption-be it a moment or an era-the equipment referred to was assigned exactly as described.

The study of locomotives and equipment ought not to be an end in itself in railroad histories; to railroaders, engines did not exist separately from the "jobs" to which they were assigned. In this book even the deeper looks into machinery are intended only to advance the story of the day-to-day workings of the New Haven and to relate its mechanical decisions to the conduct of its revenue business.

Probably more can be fathomed about the life of a railroad by studying the way it ran its freight trains than by any other course of investigation. It was here that the railroaders themselves contributed the most to this book, for much of the New Haven's operational history, as well as the lore and traditions of life out on the lines, are recorded only in the memories of the old-timers themselves. Little has been written about the New Haven's freights because, as was sagely observed by an old Shore Line engineer, "You couldn't learn much about Advance OB-2 from the other side of the club car window." The world out on the freight lines was very different from the one the public saw, and after riding a few freights in these pages, perhaps the reader will understand why, on the Railroad, that was the real world.

For many, the New Haven will always be symbolized by its fleet of name passenger trains. While to the commuters the New Haven was just a line into the city, to those who rode The Merchants Limited or The Yankee Clipper it was The New York, New Haven and Hartford-an institution somehow beyond (or above) the Railroad or the Company. The New Haven ministered to the creature comforts of its first class passengers to a degree suggesting that it actually expected to break even with its passenger business. Such indulgence of the rail passenger had become a custom in southern New England during the romanticised era of the predecessor railroads, in that world of ritual, and guarded privilege, which masqueraded as manners. The New Haven was the very personification of tradition in New England. Or rather it was a prisoner of the past, for its trains became traditions. The Railroad couldn't make a schedule change without being accused of sacrilege or worse. The typical parlor car passenger-likely a businessman who might coolly lop off a money-losing product line from his own business-would become irrational with indignation when the Railroad, in an effort to reduce its losses by a few thousand dollars a day, shifted schedules.

Down through the decades the New Haven provided the best passenger service of which it was capable, partially due to ICC fiat, but mainly because doing so was simply one of its very reasons for being. While some of the New Haven's more famous passenger trains are exalted in these pages, special attention is given to some forgotten trains, for they tell more about the Railroad's efforts to keep things going.

At the heart of all was the railroader. The New Haven, from the time it made its final consolidations of predecessor lines to the time the Railroad itself was taken over, can be measured in a single generation of railroaders. This book is about how it was when they were running the trains, when it was their Railroad.

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