Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The more things change, the more they stay the same

from tXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com
to cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 2:11 PM
subject A historical note

Something which might be of interest (or not)... while doing some unrelated research online, I came across a copy of the North American passenger rail timetables from 1910. Looking at trains from Toronto to Whitby, I found the fastest train (making eight stops in between) took 60 minutes, compared with 51 minutes for most off-peak trains today (making seven stops). It's good to see a century of progress and advances in technology have saved us all of nine minutes.

Regards,
Tom

3 comments:

  1. JenOctober 12, 2011 at 7:58 AM

    Interesting. But, with the number of stop differences, I betcha the time difference would be closer to 5 mins, not 9.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AngelSilOctober 12, 2011 at 8:21 AM

    I forget where I read it, but in the 1920s it took about 25 minutes to get from Mimico to downtown by streetcar. Even in the dead of night it's well over 45 minutes now on the dreaded Queen car. PROGRESS!

    ReplyDelete
  3. TomWOctober 12, 2011 at 5:19 PM

    In the 1920s, half of the trip between Mimico and downtown was through farmland, so no need to stop.

    ReplyDelete

This website is not only read by GO Transit passengers, but also by employees of various transit agencies across Canada and the US, members of the media and enjoys an audience from around the world. Please take that into consideration.

You can remove your comment but a copy of that comment is retained by the software and is immediately available to the editor.

ThisCrazyTrain.com's commenting rules are simple: If you make an overly offensive comment (racist, bigoted, etc.) or go waaaay off topic, your comment will be deleted. Please conduct yourself accordingly.