Alphabet Route

The Alphabet Route was a coalition of railroads connecting the Midwest United States with the Northeast, as a freight alternate to the four major systems - the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central Railroad, Erie Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Named for the many-lettered initials of the participating railroads, it used the following systems from west to east:

Major yards on the line included:

The freight trains along the middle section of the route were known as Alpha Jets. The WM, P&WV and NKP (and later WM and Norfolk & Western, after merger of latter two lines into N&W in 1964) generally operated two daily "run-through" freight trains each way via their connection in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. The westbound trains were variously symbolled AJ-1 (Alpha Jet 1) and Advance AJ-1, 1st AJ-1 and 2nd AJ-1, then later PAJ-1 and WAJ-1. The eastbound runs were usually called AJ-2 and AJ-12, with an Advanced AJ-12 sometimes also running. These runs originated or terminated in either the RDG's Rutherford Yard near Harrisburg, PA or in the WM yard at Hagerstown, MD, and ran to or from Toledo, OH and Detroit, MI. The Advanced sections usually originated or terminated in Bellevue, OH. For a time during the 1970s, the RDG also symbolled its high-priority connection run from Philadelphia to Rutherford, PA as an Alpha Jet.

Three major sources of traffic for these trains were: 1.) automobile manufacturing parts and supplies going from eastern factories to the Detroit and Toledo automotive manufacturing regions, and autos and manufactured items moving from these cities to the north eastern region; 2.) high-priority boxcar loads (often from freight consolidation and forwarding companies such as Acme Fast Freight) moving to and from New England, the New York City area, Philadelphia and Baltimore to Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis via other trains connecting with the Alpha Jet schedules; and 3.) trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) service, especially to and from Philadelphia but also from the New York area via the CNJ, going to or from one of the above mid-western cities.

...
Wikipedia