Rich and Bob,
Your replies got me to pull out my Aurora Div. ETTs.
But first let me share that if you go to the Randy Daniels waycar book you’ll find coverage of the Oregon Turn in which Karl Rethwisch describes a typical day on the job. He confirms what other old timers told me years ago. The job did its station “short” work west bound and “ran” from Oregon to Aurora to get the Kable cars onto the evening dinky. Of course Karl’s description is a bit more detailed and colorful.
Now to the “time cards” known to non employees as timetables. The same old timers that explained the workings of the Oregon Turn told (at least this is my memory) that an eastbound passenger train was taken off that had been picking up the Kable cars and that was when the Oregon Turn was put on.
Timetable #28 dated 4/24/49 list a wayfreight from Eola-Oregon- Eola daily for the first time. The 3 day a week westbound and three day a week eastbound wayfreights between Eola and Savanna are no longer shown in this time card. But as we know #52 still operates. I can find no other missing train when compared to earlier time cards. So I dug a little deeper.
TT #24 dated 9/28/47 allows #52 thirty six minutes from Stratford to Oregon. Other trains are allowed 6-8 minutes. TT #25 dated 12/7/47 allows #52 twenty four minutes between the two stations. But in TT#26 dated 4/25/48 #52 is now a morning train and is allowed 30 minutes between Stratford and Oregon. TT #27 reduces the time allowance between the two points to 18 minutes as does TT#28.
Recall from your track alignment charts and close observations of Oregon scenes that there was a short track immediately west of the depot between the mainline and the Mt Morris main. This short piece of track was referred to as the dining car track. Again the old timers told me a dining car laid over there and was picked up/set out by trains. This would explain the long running time on #52 between Stratford and Oregon.
So I’m guessing that the schedule change in 1948 on #52 may have caused complaints about service from Kable or the postal service and thus the birth of the Oregon Turn.
Again just speculation on my part based only on the materials on hand.
An unanswered question for me is who did the coupling up of train,signal and steam lines at Oregon when the Kable cars and dinning car were handled ? I can’t picture a passenger trainman in his uniform doing it and have never heard of a carman being employed at Oregon.
Leo Phillipp
On Oct 5, 2023, at 8:30 AM, Robert Herrick <rdherrick@gmail.com> wrote:
I have a 1935 ETT showing the Oregon/Mount Morris train arriving back at Oregon at 4:05 p.m. in time for a connection with train 52 at 4:29. My guess is that this connection continued up until the time Rich is modeling.
Bob H.