The Santa Fe didn’t add any grand new streamliners in mid-1939. Instead, the back cover of this timetable advertises “new faster summer schedules” for its transcontinental heavyweight trains: the California Limited, Grand Canyon, and Navajo. Click image to download a … Continue reading
Category Archives: Santa Fe
The cover of this timetable claims that Santa Fe had the nation’s largest fleet of streamlined trains in 1938. These included two Super Chiefs, two new El Capitans, six trains for the streamlined Chief, two trains for the Chicagoan/Kansas Citian, … Continue reading
The economy was recovering from the Great Depression, so Santa Fe increased the size of its system timetables from 48 pages in 1936 to 64 pages in 1937. Much of the added space is devoted to ads. Click image to … Continue reading
The new Scout “is extremely fast,” says the full-page ad on the back cover of this timetable, taking “less than 61 hours en route” from Chicago to Los Angeles. Considering that the front cover of the timetable points out that … Continue reading
Until I read the full-page ad on the back cover of this timetable, I had forgotten, or maybe never knew, that San Diego held an international exposition in 1935. Like Chicago in 1933 and New York and San Francisco in … Continue reading
Between 1929 and 1933, trips in intercity passenger trains fell by 45 percent and passenger-miles by 50 percent. Since the Depression wasn’t going away, Santa Fe advertised on the back cover of this timetable that it was dramatically dropping fares. … Continue reading
The back cover of this timetable is a full-page ad for “the new Observation Tower at Desert View.” The ad falsely claims that the tower “is a replica of the type of ‘watch tower’ frequently found in the larger prehistoric … Continue reading
Ten months after the release of yesterday’s timetable, Santa Fe introduced the Chief (trains 19 & 20), its new, faster, premiere train. It made its first run on November 14, 1926, and as this timetable shows, the California Limited is … Continue reading
This timetable came out nearly 13 years later than yesterday’s, but followed a similar format: condensed timetables in the beginning, then eight pages of maps, followed by detailed timetables. Like yesterday’s and all of the Santa Fe timetables that will … Continue reading
In October 1913, after 13 years of work, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were joined at the Panama Canal for the first time. Though the canal wouldn’t be open for business for another ten months, its pending completion was certain … Continue reading