In the TV series "Mad Men", the main character is often shown leaving home / work, and right afterwards, after a cut, arriving at work / home. How much time would he in reality have spent commuting in between these two situations?
He lives in the suburb of Ossining and is occasionally shown on some kind of suburban train - what route was that, when was it established? Would his commute have changed during the course of the events of the series (1960-1970) with new routes being established etc.?
As a European, the US strike me as very focused on cars, but some of the larger (and somewhat older cities) seem to have quite an OK public transit systems. Were there different degrees of prestiges associated with using or not using your personal car to commute at different times? Don Draper is definitely upper middle to upper class and has this huge Lincoln by season 3 (haven't watched it further, please no spoliers! :) ), but he doesn't seem to mind joining all the regular folks on that train - so would this just have taken way less time?
It would have been a short car ride from his house, then about 48 minutes on the train. The line was established in 1914, and still operates today.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossining_%28Metro-North_station%29
The car ride would be at least an hour and a half. The train line would give time to read, work, and of course drink.
A relative was global comptroller of a major Swiss bank, and he took the train to work everyday, it's not at all uncommon for suburban residents of NYC.
The railroad would have been the New York Central, on it's Hudson Division/Line (sometime called the "Water Level Route" because it follows the Hudson River). The line started around the 1850s (minor correction to /u/speedway315, the current station was built in 1914). He would have driven to Ossining Station and taken the train to Grand Central Terminal, which wouldn't have been too far from his office.
Here's a sample timetable if you want to get an idea of commute times. It would have been roughly an hour on the train plus driving to the station and walking to the office.
The only real change would have been the railroad changing to Penn Central around 1968 (they merged with the Pennsylvania RR).
As others have pointed out, driving into Manhattan would have been more inconvenient, a lot of business men would have taken the train.