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Historical Travels: Timetables

Reconstructing journeys from the past

What are timetables?

Photograph of Oakwood Heights R.R. Station, Oakwood Heights, Staten Island, N.Y. [station with platform and people waiting for train, sign reading This Crossing Protected by Flagman between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.] NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 104913When referenced for travel, timetables are charts that indicate the departure and arrival times for various modes of transportation- bus, railroad, airlines, and steamboats/steamships . These resources are extremely useful when utilized with maps, as it can give us a better sense of how long it would take to get between different locations that are indicated on the map.

Please note that timetables appear in a variety of resources: guidebooks, newspapers, city directories. In addition, please note that these resources often include timetables for a variety of transportation types. For example, Thomas Cook Overseas timetable includes timetables for boats, buses, and railroads. As such, be mindful of the number or research "routes" you might need to take, to access these timetables.

In the drop-down menu for this tab, you can explore how you can locate timetables for the various modes of transportation.

Oakwood Heights R.R. Station, Oakwood Heights, Staten Island, N.Y. [station with platform and people waiting for train, sign reading This Crossing Protected by Flagman between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.] NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 104913

Periodicals

As mentioned above, periodicals are useful tools to accessing timetables for various modes of transportations.

You can access periodicals via the New York Public Library's Articles and Databases page. 

In the search box, type "newspapers" to see list of all the newspaper databases that we have access to. Please note that many databases either require a NYPL Library Card at  or require you to be at a NYPL library location to use. 

We do recommend utilizing the following databases that we have access to:

We do recommend also reviewing the Newspapers section under the Additional Resources tab, which provides additional information and resources on how to access these materials. 

What to Look for On a Timetable

page 35 from 1886' Rand-McNally official railway guide and hand book When using a timetable, these resources will provide valuable pieces of information about the route that you are researching.

For an example, let's use this timetable on page 35 from 1886' Rand-McNally official railway guide and hand book (available via HathiTrust-University of Virginia) to see what you can expect to find on these types of resources:

  • The name of the railroad lines:
    • Here, the lines are the Connecticut River, Ashuelot, Vermont Valley, and Sullivan County Railroads. Knowing these names, you can locate maps that show the routes of these lines.
  • The starting and ending location of a route
    • Here, New York is the initial stop, with Keene on the other end of the line. 
  • When the vehicle will arrive and depart a station
    • Here, if we are going north, we can see that if you enter the railcar at the first stop (New York) at 9:15am, you can expect to arrive at the last stop (Keene) by 11:30am on the next day.
  • What are intermediate stops along the route
  • What days/times were the routes in service
    • As you can see at the bottom, some routes are daily, but others do exclude certain days of the week.
  • Alternate routes along the line
    • In this example, some of the trains are ending in Keene while others are ending in Quebec. As such, this timetable is showing the multiple options of travel routes that are being utilized along these lines. In these cases, it is helpful to check the resource to see if a map is attached. As it so happens, this guidebook has a map of the Connecticut River Railroad lines that helps us to further understand this timetable and what route/time a traveler might have taken, depending on the stop they wanted to depart.