timetable rack, The

Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine, Jun 2002 by Chandler, Ron

I have written in past issues about the years when I was in high school and some railfan friends and I hung out almost nightly during the summer months at the Chesapeake & Ohio station in Holland, Michigan, recalling the enjoyment we had watching the comings and goings of countless trains at that location.

But there was something else at that station that captured my imagination and influenced the shape of my hobby for the years and decades that were to follow. The thing that was to have such a powerful effect on my love of railroading was nothing more unusual than the stations timetable rack.

That veritable travel library was on the agent's office wall, to his right as he stood at the barred window at which passengers would buy tickets or make inquiries about train departures or arrivals.

I'm pretty sure that it was on my very first evening's visit to the station in the early summer of 1952 that I spied that wonderful wall of timetables. We were standing out on the platform after the sun had set and all the station lights, indoors and out, had been lit. I remember looking in at the furnishings of the office which could only be fully seen through the bay window from the exterior when the lights were turned on. I recall vividly seeing those colorful folders with the great variety of railroad emblems displayed so that the agent, not the public, could see them.

The rack had at least 30 slots into which timetables were inserted in a straight up-and-down position so that each folder's front cover was almost fully visible to the agent. So it was that whatever railroad's timetable a customer might ask for, the agent could instantly see and grab the requested document.

Upon my first sighting of this overwhelming display, I became instantly and desperately covetous of the entire assemblage of those appealing, bright-colored folders! I wanted not only to look at and carefully study each timetable- I wanted to possess each and every one of them!

I never really understood my psychological motivation in this regard. I just knew I wanted to have every railroad timetable I could get my hands on. Quite probably it had to do not only with the love of trains that I'd had since my earliest recollections, but also with my love for geography and travel. Ever since I was old enough to understand that a map was a kind of picture of where places were located, I had loved looking at them. And timetables, as I knew well, contained maps among their chief features.

There was just one catch. I had to figure out how I could go about getting somebody to give me copies of those timetables. There appeared to be only one way to do that-of course that would be to ask the agent to give them to me. But how could I do that? I was 14 years old, and, except for my annual train trip on the C&O with my mother to visit relatives in Chicago, I was obviously not a big traveler who had any need for a large assortment of railroad timetables.

I thought about this situation for a couple of days, and decided that my best approach lay in being very low key and taking a gradualist approach. I would start by asking for the obvious C&O timetables that would normally be used in planning trips from Holland.

In a couple of days, I had worked up enough nerve to ask for my first timetable-- a copy of the C&O bifold issue that showed schedules just for the former Pere Marquette lines in Michigan. Certainly nobody could find such a request unreasonable. This was a blue, gray, and white folder with a very attractive photograph of a C&O E7 (in the former Pere Marquette color scheme) and part of a passenger coach on the cover. It was a very handsome folder, and it would be a great start to what I hoped would quickly become a huge collection.

I remember very clearly taking leave of my companions out on the station platform and walking into the waiting room and getting in line at the barred ticket window. I was standing behind a lady who was getting a somewhat complicated interline ticket to someplace or other, and the process took what seemed like hours. I was a little nervous about approaching the very businesslike agent with my request, but I was determined that I would leave the station that night with a copy of that C&O timetable! Finally, the lady ahead of me seemed satisfied with her arrangements, took her long strip of tickets and some change, and stepped away from the window.

"Can I help you?" asked the agent, who seemed to be staring straight through me from behind his "cage."

Swallowing hard to make sure my voice didn't waver or crack, I replied in my best pseudo-adult voice, "Could I have a C&O timetable, please?" I was unprepared for the agent's response.

"Local or system?" he shot back.

Wow! He was giving me a choice, and I had to think fast.

"If it's not too much trouble, could I have one of each, please?" I replied instantly. There were a couple of seconds of trepidation. Had I asked for too much? The agent never displayed any trace of reaction on his stony visage.

"Sure, here you go," he responded, and shoved both folders at me over the counter under the bars.