Curious PRR find

[sirenwerks]

A guy at work who heard I was into trains gave me something today - an original PRR routing book dated Sept 1 1943. Not sure what to do with it, considering I don't model the PRR, but it's in great condition.

[nkalanaga]

If nothing else, give the PRR historical society a call, and see if they'd like it.

[prr7161]

The PRRT&HS may be interested in the doc, so check in with them, but they don't have a great process for hosting scans on the web (which would be of interest to a lot of folks, myself included).  Unfortunately Keystone Crossings is gone or that would be the natural for a web home.  You could try giving the gent at Multimodalways a ring:

http://www.multimodalways.org/contact/contact.html

Thanks for taking the time to rehome this!

[Blazeman]

Routing Guides were used by shippers to find bizarre combinations of carriers/junctions to apply in certain situations.  If a shipper wanted to "reward" a carrier with some of his revenue, he could search amongst the  published routes on a rate and find something specific to meet that goal possibly short-hauling the big carrier.   If a shipper say shipped a car of lumber or bricks to a team track at the other end of the railroad pending a later sale, a circuitous route would be searched for that would provide that extra time.  Then when the lumber got sold, a reconsignment would be submitted to the new consignee and a more direct route specified.  That way, the shipper could put the sale on their books, possibly beat a rate increase, and have the car further along to make a faster delivery.

So what you'll see in the guides are just junctions between railroads (thousands of them in those days) as well as scads of long-gone railroads that get a piece of the pie if that route was used. Similarly there will be thousands of routing combinations and myriad junctions.  But no pictures, no timetables.

[Iain]

How big is it?

[chicken45]

How big is it?

TWSS

[sirenwerks]

How big is it?

Book's 8.5x11, simple 2-hole metal binder but the hard cover's professionally printed and tape seamed on the bound edges. The pages, 69 pages in total, look typed and probably mimeographed, I p[resume many copies were made. It includes 15 pages of for a list of stations, 5 pages lsited as "Descripyion of Groups", 27 pages of cross-indexes, and 28 pages marked "Explanation of Route-Numbers".


And I was wrong about the date. The book is dated January 1, 1951, it supersedes the Sept 1, 1943 version. It covers the PRR; NY & Long Branch, Pennsylvania& Atlantic; PRSL, Baltimore & Eastern; and Cherry Creek & Dixonville.


Overall, the book is in great condition, not much wear on the covers (a little rounding on the edges, but not torn, frayed, or unraveling) and the pages are in perfect, unmarked condition , only finely browned with age.