Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Grand Trunk Railway System Public Time Tables 1899

1899 Grand Trunk Railway System Timetable

First of all I have to apologize for the fact that pages 9 and 10 of this timetable are at the back of the document. I didn’t realize I had skipped over them until I was finished scanning, and I wasn’t going to subject this fragile old document to re-scanning, nor was I going to pay for Adobe Writer which would allow me to insert pages into the middle of a document. So that’s me — half curator, half cheapskate.

First stop — the Index to Stations on page 3, where we note that Ainsworth’s 1899 population is given as 60. Then we have to go to pages 19 and 20 of the timetable (the 13th page of this PDF), to find any further mention of Ainsworth. Eastward trains stop at the Ainsworth station daily except Sunday at 11:03 a.m., and daily at 6:06 p.m. Westward trains stop at 7:14 a.m., and daily except Sunday at 3:58 p.m.

Looking through all these old timetables has given me a hankering to take a long trip on Amtrak, just to ride the train. In fact I went to the Amtrak site and found a nice long journey across the northernmost states to Everett, Washington. A bit pricey, since I would simply have to have a roomette, but I’d like to do it someday.

Someday in the distant future, because I just got off the phone with Chicago Title and — yikes! There goes my Amtrak ride, and they’ve only got back as far as 1911.

More to come on that, and also more timetables to come. I’m starting to collect these timetables for their own sake, with only a passing curiosity as to whether they mention Ainsworth.

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