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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:17 PM

    The 1930s are represented by one Hermes timetable (August 1935) and three official CFR timetables (June 1934, October 1938, May 1939). The former hadn't changed much in form other than that the map was improved just the bit it needed and timetables of S. A. Mera buses in Transylvania were added.

    The CFR timetables are… kind of a contrast, I suppose. Within their pages, only one non-Romanian language has any significant standing - that being French (English, German and Hungarian only make an appearance on the title pages for the individual sections). They have little third-party advertising. And the simpler table design would define Romanian timetable for the next half-century - the notable feature that makes it stand out to me would be the table number being placed in what I've come to call the "directorate field" (the big cell in the train number row and the station column). The pre-war timetables also repeat the station column on the right when a table is laid out as a vertical spread across two pages and usually include line diagrams of the route in the table and connecting lines on the side, actually using a lot of space (half a page) to make it easier to keep track of where you are - wartime and post-war cost cutting would put an end to that, at least for a time.

    Another thing I'd like to note about those: separate rows for both timezones where they changed! It seems both CFR and Hermes did it, and think it rather helps with scanning the times a fair bit.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    6/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:18 PM

    Interestingly, the 1934 is littered with littered with cautionary railway safety stories in the form of telegrams received from stations across the country. In a few places, the English words "Stop, look, listen!" are featured, said to be "on the mind of every motorist in America".

    An example - on the page showing the Câmpina-Bucharest section in table 29 - The lower half of the page reads: "What one man does to himself! Telegram from Radiana, no. 71, 4.11.1933 at 16 45 hours. The passenger train departing from Radiana at 4 21 hours, at the exit from the station, between the exit barrier and the distant signal, has struck [why is this derived from Slavic 'to hunt'?] a [horse] carriage with two people. The carriage broke apart and the people, very seriously injured [another Slavic word, this one meaning the same thing at least], have been taken on [the train, I assume] and transported to the hospital in Adjud; in the carriage, a demijohn and bottles of wine were found. The cows escaped unharmed. The train was led by locomotive 130 436, Caraiman the driver and Ioniță the chef de train, both from Adjud. No damage to the line and locomotive, the barrier was signed with a Cross of Saint Andrew. We request an investigation of the case. Kiriac, station chief.

    There's also a nice note under one table saying CFR cannot compensate passengers for lost connections, but they can rest assured that all signalling errors will be reported ;)

    The 1938 timetable was the most comprehensive (or the most comprehensively archived one), containing an index of through carriages CFR bus, as well as ship times.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    7/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:18 PM

    The thing that stood out to me the most in these was the route map, which leaned very heavily into schematicity, more so than any equivalent I can think of. The whole design unsurprisingly rests upon a central element - the line going north from Bucharest and making a nice curved triangle shape in Ploiești. Everything is cheerfully distorted in order to give the Bucharest-Brașov-Sighișoara-Teluș-Cluj-Oradea-Episcopia Bihor a nice striking straight diagonal stroke. The line to Craiova and Timișoara might even look kinda fitting to you until you realize it still ran via Pitești at the time. The Danube, Black Sea and Dniester are shown as ship routes with thick dots. Otherwise, dashed lines are narrow-gauge, small dotted lines are private railways. I assume the double lines were, well, literally double track.

    As for the table numbering, CFR went with a rough ordering starting once more from the Bucharest-Pitești-Craiova-Timișoara line as number 1, but this time continuing in a circle, branches inside to outside, the clockwise, such that the mainline though Brașov and Sighișoara got numbers 29 (to Arad) and 30 (to Cluj and Oradea) and the last 'mainline' table, 131, went to Giurgiu-Videle.

    8/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:18 PM

    The striking diagonal stroke had to be abandoned (never to return) when Hungary was handed a large chunk of Transylvania in the Second Vienna Award, and then by 1943, with Romania's participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union and expansion as far as the proverbial gates of Mykolayiv, the schematic format was briefly abadoned, perhaps in order to emphasize the country's expanded borders (indeed, the map also included the territory awarded to Hungary earlier). The Zhmerynka-Odesa line is a… striking presence.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    9/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:18 PM

    As for the post-war era, the shorter connection between Bucharest and Craiova was apparently completed in 1947, and the numbers were reshuffled such that it got number 1, the former route via Pitești got 27, and the routes to Arad and Cluj-Oradea got separated into 34 and 58, respectively.

    Otherwise, it was still kind of stuck in the past. Even the explanation of timezones still talked about Amsterdam time, abolished by German occupants and never brought back, and even *gasp* about timezones in the United States!

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    The 1948/9 timetable came with some landscape/architecture/folk pictures (similar to some interwar Polish timetables), and also notably mentions through carriages to not just Paris or Beograd, but also… "Odra", the then-misleadingly named Świnoujście station! It also came with a new map that once again showed the borders while being somewhat more schematic than the 1943 one. (1948 was the year the Communists got rid of the trappings of constitutional monarchy in Romania)

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    Then there's a gap, and 1952 shows up with a new, much simpler line diagram that didn't distinguish double-track and main lines anymore. Lines radiated out of Bucharest, and a new, vertical, axis was drawn to anchor them - Bucharest-Ploiești-"Orașul Stalin" (Brașov, in Poland Katowice was the city that suffered that fate)-Ciceu-Deda-Beclean pe Someș (It was also quite sloppily made, many diacritics are missing). Most tables were laid out landscape, such that you would now read the book sideways. The subject matter of the pictures was made labor-related.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    The couple of later examples were even sloppier, and I will not dignify them with a comment.

    10/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:19 PM

    Hmmm… There were so many variations, it seems like they changed *something* every year.

    By 1958, the books became prettier again, with new covers, a route map once again striking a balance between geographical and schematic, showing the borders, some nice-looking, if doodle-like, drawings, and the return of the small route diagrams, but instead of accompanying the tables, they got their own pages, marking new sections.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    1961 marked a return to photos between the tables, and perhaps a typography change (and a new map, they seemed to mess with it all the time, too)…

    1962 marked a milestone - the adoption of a new triple-digit table numbering system (and, yes, yet another map).
    Numbering zones where set up around mainlines mostly radiating out of Bucharest, maintaining the principle of starting with the line to Craiova and continuing clockwise, yielding:
    100 Bucharest-Roșiori-Craiova-Timișoara-Arad
    200 Teiuș-Alba Iulia-Deva-Arad
    300 Bucharest-Brașov-Sighișoara-Teiuș-Cluj-Oradea-Episcopia Bihor
    400 Brașov-Ciceu-Deda-Beclean-Dej-Baia Mare-Satu Mare
    500 Bucharest-Buzău-Mărășești-Suceava-Vicșani
    600 Mărășești-Tecuci-Bârlad-Iași-Ungheni h.
    700 Bucharest-Urziceni-Fărei-Brăila-Galați
    800 Bucharest-Constanța-Mangalia

    These "magistrale" for the most part remain the same today (notably, 200 would be extended to Brașov via Sibiu in the late 60s and the 100 zone would be shortened to Timișoara (by the 70s) and renumbered to 900 in 1996), although the branch line numbering would be tweaked. A lot. Case in point - in 1962, the lines to Giurgiu were 801 and 802. Already in 1963, they were renumbered 101 and 102. But that map looks so much better, so that's what I'm going to show. I think they changed the fonts again, too, going all-in on serifs.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    11/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:19 PM

    1965 would see the return of advertising. It was only the year after that the ads started getting kinda cute, though - on the inner side of the front cover was:

    An ad for sleeper and restaurant cars in the 1966/7 CFR timetable. A smiling butterfly-winged, human-faced creature holds a server's tray with drinks and a waiter's cloth (or how do you call it) in its hands, and in the bright spots on its purplish wings are depicted silhouettes - one sleeping in a bed, the other reclined in a seat, reading. In the background, a train on an electrified line rides through a misty forest.
    The caption reads in Romanian: "Călătorind cu vagonul de dormit și servind masa la vagonul restaurant"

    Another example that drew my attention:

    An ad in the 1966/7 CFR timetable depicting a hedgehog, standing on its hind legs in front of a mirror, holding a razor in its front left paw and is turned to look at the reader. It's drawn to look kind of beardy. The captions read:
    săpunurile DE RAS (literally "shaving soaps")
    Palmier
    Lavanda
    Triumf
    Elida
    produse de Stela
    Corespund Exigentilor DVS.

    12/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:19 PM

    In 1970 they added a simple map showing public transport stops around Gara de Nord in Bucharest, along with a description of their routes, and also little rectangles in the station column, of the kind that featured prominently in old Hungarian timetables, which I _think_ signify which side of the line the station building was on. This was short-lived, however. In 1971 they also added an extra map and table of all stations in Bucharest. The main line map also started showing double-tracked (again) and electrified lines.

    From 1974, the table numbers, names, and fast trains (but only the numbers, I guess they were still trying to save *something* on color printing) were printed in magenta (I think).

    Also a prime example of Romanian railway improvement weirdness - according to the maps, Craiova-Timișoara was one of the first routes to be electrified… but then it took the better part of a decade for the wires to reach Bucharest, even as three other trunks got them.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    13/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:19 PM

    In 1980, the map reverted to simple lines with no indication of doubling or electrification. The ads slowly disappeared. On the other hand, table headers started mentioning which sections of line were electrified. In 1987, finally the magenta/red coloring of fast trains started extending to the times themselves and a page about the Bucharest Metro was added (alt text: when you're still saving on multi-color printing, lines are indicated with patterns instead.) - the pages about public transport access to Gara de Nord were retooled into a page showing Metro exits there.

    In or around 1991, they decided to a few maps of areas around some major stations and also seat number layout charts… And put many of the "extra information" pages into random spots between tables.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    In 1992, third-party ads made a return, in banner form this time - one example for business named Computerland read "Speed, performance, efficiency. A sure way into the third millennium."

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    14/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:19 PM

    1993 saw a big redesign, probably the biggest ever. The map was replaced with something that used a kinda garish yellow for lands beyond the borders and tried to stick to 45° angles WAY too closely. The symbols were revised. Headers were now tinted blue, while red was removed again. Icons for sleeper/couchette/restaurant cars went into the row showing classes of seat available, and I think luggage cars were indicated for the first time. Arrows indicating which way to turn pages to reverse direction were added. And last but not least, each tables header showed the line's route with little squares labeled with cities that were filled-in for the section you were looking at on the given page. The international tables where re-arranged, with local #CrossBorderRail traffic getting its own couple of pages with TF (later T) tables.

    One annoying flaw was that while pretty much every table got special rows showing the ultimate destination of a train and which table it was shown in, such rows weren't added for the origin for whatever reason.

    …There were also, kind of ominous-looking in their simplicity, ads for a weekly called "Capital".

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    In 1994, the blue accents turned magenta and the table design was altered a bit more - for one, the train categories and numbers were right-aligned, as if someone had been looking at Excel too much.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    …Then in 1995, they wen for another redesign, 'cause why not at this point, I guess? Out with the squares, in with circles! Black is the new red! International IC logo! Striking table number!

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    …And in 1996 they redesigned AGAIN, which I don't feel like screenshotting anymore.
    Some time around then they added a table 1000, to show all trains between Bucharest and Ploiești.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    15/

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Jul 24, 2025, 5:20 PM

    In 1997, proper center alignment of train numbers was restored, the "service" car symbols were separated from class numbers into their own row, the layout was changed to portrait, and the general "modern" aesthetic toned down. In 1998, they finally stopped redesigning tables every frigging year and instead added highlights back - and multi-colored! IC/EC/EN trains got green, accelerat (fast) got red and some other trains got blue (those that run only on some days?).

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    2000 had the route map with a hypsometric background and, for the first time, every "magistrale" getting its own color and lines belonging to its numbering zone getting colored accordingly. Third-party advertising business apparently dried up in the early oughts.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    In 2003/4, the colored highlights were removed again (but some railway ads were still printed in color).

    In 2006/7 the magistrale colors were gone, but marking of double-tracked and electrified sections on the map made a return.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    2013/14 is the last timetable in the collection.

    timetableworld.com/ttw-viewer.

    16/16

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