Passenger Timetables
The A&Y provided passenger service from its first year through 1939. When Southern operated the A&Y as a subsidiary prior to 1917, we think that Southern locomotives hauled the passenger trains. After 1917, when the A&Y ran its own engines, the workhorse for passenger service was the leased Southern 4-6-0s. I know that No. 950, leased from Southern, was photographed pulling the train in and out of Mount Airy.
The light rail, the short line limits on amenities (open windows, not air conditioning), and probably the slow schedule of the mixed service trains, led passenger trains on the A&Y to be nicknamed "The Shoofly," a common moniker for branch line trains. Although North Carolina was known as a state for limited investment in infrastructure (lack of running water and dirt roads were very common outside cities as late as the 40s). Still, automobiles and the Great Depression took steady bites out of passenger revenue through the 1930s. Revenues for passenger service were not a profit center even at the best of times. The A&Y management petitioned the ICC to discontinue service starting in the early 1930s, but citizens along the route were vocal enough to hold that off until at least 1937, and there is evidence that was stretched to 1939. There is some irony in the timing: if the line had survived another year or two, wartime traffic might have justified keeping it another half-decade. But most likely, the railroad decision makers saw freight as the more significant service and the passenger trains were going to go.
Public passenger timetables for the A&Y are rare primary sources. Two snapshots survive in my collection: one from the CF&YV era (1894, pre-A&Y) and one from 1939, the last year of operation.
Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railway — Passenger Timetable, September 1894
The CF&YV was the A&Y's direct predecessor, operating the same main line between Wilmington and Mount Airy before the Atlantic Coast Line broke it apart in 1899 to form the A&Y. This September 1894 timetable predates the A&Y by five years. It shows the passenger schedule at the height of CF&YV operations, before the bankruptcy and reorganization that would produce the A&Y.
The CF&YV ran a complete passenger operation across its 248-mile main line. Comparing the 1894 schedule with the A&Y's 1939 schedule below shows how passenger service contracted as the railroad shrank from a system line to a regional short line under Southern's wing.
Southern Railway Public Timetable — A&Y Service, January 1939
This is a scan from the January 1939 Southern Railway public timetable, which included subsidiary schedules. Because the A&Y ceased passenger service later that year, this is in all likelihood the last public timetable showing A&Y passenger trains in operation. Two tables are relevant: Table 72 covers the main line (Greensboro to Mount Airy), and Table 71 shows the Ramseur Branch service.
Also notable here: look at what happened to the southern portion of the old CF&YV main line. The Atlantic Coast Line's section — from Wilmington north through Sanford to the former CF&YV junction — continued operating as part of the ACL system, shown as it actually was in service. The 1899 division that created the A&Y left that southern track in different hands permanently.
