Passenger Service

Penn Central operated the largest passenger service of any U.S. railroad at the time of Amtrak's inception in 1971. This section contains various public materials for PC passenger service, including timetables, postcards, etc. Also found here is any other historical information regarding PC passenger service.

Historical Information

Harlem Branch

Read about the end of passenger service on the Harlem Branch.

Rahway Station

Read about the passenger station at Rahway, NJ

Public Timetables

Penn Central used dozens of different public timetables for intercity and commuter rail service. A list of public timetables used by PC, along with scans of public timetables, can be found here.

Passenger Service Advertisements

This is a 1972 advertisement for special trains from Boston and Providence to Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, MA, for New England Patriots football games. Trains arrived 30 minutes before kickoff and left 30 minutes after the game ended. (450 K, click here for a smaller 87 K version, 1/26/02)

Book Cover

This was an usual find for me--a Penn Central book cover. It features a picture of a Metroliner train at speed somewhere on the Northeast Corridor. They apparently were given to school children to use on their textbooks and also promote a message of rail safety. Here is a picture of as much of the book cover as would fit on my scanner.

Metroliner Postcards

Penn Central heavily promoted its Metroliner trains operating on the Northeast Corridor, probably because they were the only successful passenger operation that PC operated. Here are three postcards PC produced featuring the Metroliner. These postcard scans are courtesy of Stan Feldman.

A patriotic view of the Metroliner.

Showing the speed on the outside and the confort on the inside.

Did Penn Central mention that the Metroliners are fast?

From on the train...

Here's a photo of a set of PC playing cards. These were available on passenger trains.

These are two signs used in passenger cars to denote quiet time and to allow or prohibit smoking in the car:

Quiet is requested (front side)
Have you forgotten any personal property? (rear side)

Smoking Permitted (front side)
Please Do Not Smoke in any area of this car(rear side)

Crew paperwork

Passenger train crews were required to fill out Train Consist and Delay Report forms (Form T-87) for every train they operated. Here are two pairs of forms from PC passenger trains 14 and 351, which ran daily between Chicago and Buffalo via Detroit and the Canada Southern:

Train 14 T-87 forms: dated 1/21/70 and 1/26/70
Train 351 T-87 forms: dated 1/20/70 and 1/21/70

On the Train 14 forms, the MFVX and PC 9731 cars were Flexi-Van flatcars, and the extra six-digit numbers written to the right of them were the numbers of the Flexi-Van trailers on each car. (Contributed by Adrian Telizyn.)