Public Timetables Listing
Contributed by Jim Mancuso
Based on what my collection contains, I offer the following information on the variety of public timetable forms the Penn Central issued over the years. These include the following:
- Form 1 East West principal intercity services on both NYC and PRR.
- Form 3 Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines system folder
- Form 5 New York-Philadelphia condensed
- Form 6 Chicago-Valparaiso
- Form 12 New York-Philadelphia complete. includes Princeton branch shuttle
- Form 14 Baltimore-Washington local, first as a TDI folder, finished as a card form.
- Form 15 Philadelphia-Baltimore Washington complete, included some local trains
- Form 16 Harrisburg-Buffalo trains- one pair a day, later reduced to triweekly.
The following are the Philadelphia (ex-PRR) commuter forms:
- Form 22 Chestnut Hill
- Form 25 Levittown
- Form 27 Manyunk
- Form 30 Camden Pemberton-Moorestown
- Form 36 West Chester
- Form 37 Elwyn-Media
- Form 40 Paoli
- Form 41 Harrisburg
- Form 69 Wilmington
- LB2 North Jersey Coast (joint with CNJ)
In 1968, Penn Central also issued the Form 54 Philadelphia terminal timetable twice that year and that form, along with Form 30, were never seen again.
Principal intercity forms consisted of the following:
- Form 55 Philadelphia-Pittsburgh (three issues)
- Form 56 Thru service to and from the South
- Form 70 Turbotrains
- Form 76 Washington-Boston
- Form 79 New York Washington (later included Metroliners)
- Form 80 Metroliner card
- Form 92 Chicago-Florida, Chicago-Cincinnati, Cleveland-Cincinnati, Cleveland-Indianapolis
- Form 93 Buffalo-Chicago via both Toledo and Detroit
There were also the aforementioned Forms 1, 16, 15, and 12. When the New Haven Railroad was brought into the picture, its timetable forms included the following:
- Form 200 system-covered the entire railroad
- Form 210 Boston Suburban
- Form 222 New York-New Haven
- Form 223 New York-Stamford-New Canaan
- Form 228 New York-Danbury-Pittsfield
- Form 225 New York-New Haven-Boston
Of the New Haven forms, the Form 200 was issued only once and never seen again, while most of the other New Haven forms continued until 1970. In the Boston area New Haven Form 210 and Boston and Albany Form 500 were replaced by Form 71.
On the New York end of the New Haven, Forms 110 and 111 replaced New Haven forms 222, 223 and 228. Other New York area timetable forms issued by Penn Central included Form 105 Hudson Line, Form 112 Upper Harlem Line, Form 113 Harlem Line, and the aforementioned forms 110 and 111, which were entirely new forms laid out in the same New York Central format as the others. Penn Central issued its final set of public timetables in 1976, some forms in January, one in February to close out what amounts to over 500 public timetable issues produced by Penn Central in its 8 and a half year history. Former Pennsylvania Railroad timetable forms remained in their traditional formats, while those of New York Central and New Haven were revamped to match. All employee timetables, however, were produced in the Pennsylvania Railroad format, with the exception of one final issue for the New Haven Railroad in its format. It, too was converted to the PRR format as the New Haven Region.