I wonder how much revenue railroads lost because of employee passes? I was particularly interested in the Pullman Company - it seems (from what I've seen) they gave away passes like candy. Granted, it was mostly for a berth, but still.
Thanks for any information....

No less an authority than John H. White Jr. had an article on this topic in Railroad History 182, Spring 2000. The title is "The Railroad Pass: Perk or Plunder".

-Philip Marshall

I use mine 4 days a week, saves me a ton of $$$$ and aggravation not driving into the city during rush hour and I can walk to train station from my house.

I have a few conductor's books from the 1940's...on SR. The people riding "dead-head" or on "passes" always seems extreme. One train showed only 28 paying passengers and 40 riding dead-head.
Overall the numbers in the book are eye-opening. It gives you real pause to see a train listed with a diner, 5 Pullman cars...and like 12 passengers. No wonder they got out of the passenger business.
T7

Thanks for all the responses. I will dig up the John White article for sure.

Someone's been selling off the pass collection from a ET&WNC employee on eBay, 2-3 at a time. That guy must have had passes to ride on every railroad in the East and Midwest from all the road names that slowly creep up for sale there!

Two factors:

1) Passes to move employees around as part of their job.
Deadhead Crews, employees traveling to distant job sites, etc.

2) Passes for "Friends" of the RR (includes Clergy), people that
route freight over your RR, etc.

The ICC did restrict passes at sometime in the early 1900s.
before that, there were a lot more passes out there.

-Hudson

The pass system was somewhat more complex when dealing with Pullman. It would be entirely possible that the passengers were indeed covering their railroad fare with a company pass but paying a reduced fare for accommodations. It was common practice for Pullman to sell available space to railroad employees at a discount.

Other factors could increase the number of deadheads on certain trains as well. Many railroads had trains that did not honor employee passes (usually the premier expresses). Also, many railroads issued passes to officials of other railroads as professional courtesy dictated. Probably the most egregious abuse of the pass system was giving them to politicians. Employee passes were mostly a necessity, as were pie books (meal vouchers).

PennCentral thought that the State of New Jersey required it to issue too many unrestricted passes for travel within the State, so the 1st Metroliners would not carry local passengers between Newark and Trenton. Those passes weren't valid on trips that crossed the State line.

The Santa Fe prohibited passes from being honored on the California Limited (predecessor of the Chief and Super Chief). The late Ned Mahoney also wrote that the California Limited was the one train that business/private cars were never to be carried on per official policy. He indicated that during his time as a secretary to division superintendents, at least one division superintendent was fired for failure to observe that instruction. He also recounted the time that the pass for his superintendent and the car got stolen from the car-it was later found in the home of a railway employee whom Mahoney described as "a Grade A kleptomaniac".

I recall back in the days of the Penn Central, freight crews regularly deadheaded between harrisburg and Philadelphia and vice versa on regular passenger trains. I often saw them on the occasions I rode those trains, no matter what time of day or night. They were always identifiable by their aluminum cases and brakeman's lanterns, and they always sat together at one end of the last car of the train. Sometimes there would be a dozen or more.