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The Boston Terminal Company
Arrival & Departure Book #45
Effective: June, 1909

The following information is from a booklet in the collection of A.J. Kleipass, and may not be reused without his permission.

When we think of employee timetables, we usually imagine thick books with dozens if not hundreds of schedules, each of which lists scores of way-points -- some are stations, others little more than dirt track crossing the right-of-way -- which the trains pass between point A and point B. The employee timetable reproduced below is the exact opposite of this.

In the summer of 1909, the Boston Terminal Company, the then-operators of Boston's South Station, was playing host to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, the Boston & Albany Railroad, and the B&A's parent company, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Intended, in all likelihood, to aid the towermen, baggage handlers, information booth workers, et cetera., they published this booklet, 45th in the series, to inform them of the arrival or departure times and track numbers of all the trains using the terminal. And there were quite a few trains back then! According to the booklet, on the average weekday no fewer than 817 trains, accounting for nearly 1550 train movements, used the terminal. Of those 817 trains, 226 were from the B&A / NYC&HR and 591 were from the NH. These are, no doubt, impressive numbers to anyone who has used South Station in the present day -- it is truly a ghost of its former self.

So, put on your engineer's cap, grab your oil can, and let's take a trip back in time to the golden days of June, 1909, in the great city of Boston...