The Choctaw Route, or more formally the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad, extended from West Memphis, Arkansas to Amarillo, Texas in 1902 when it was purchased by the Rock Island Railroad. Rock Island extended the line to Memphis, TN on the east end and Tucumcari, NM on the west end where it met the route of the Californian and later the Golden State, the joint Rock Island-Southern Pacific trains between Chicago and Los Angeles. As shown in Rock Island’s 1938 timetable, it ran a train called the Memphis-Californian from Memphis to Tucumcari, where it joined with the Californian to L.A.
Click image to download a 2.8-MB PDF of this brochure.
As announced in this 1940 brochure, on November 17, 1940, the Rock Island introduced a new mostly-streamlined train on the Choctaw Route from Memphis to Amarillo. Though other cars were sometimes added, the basic Choctaw Rocket consisted of a semi-streamlined heavyweight baggage car, a streamlined coach, a streamlined sleeper, and a streamlined observation-lounge-diner. Unlike Rock Island’s previous Rockets, which were built by Budd, the Choctaw‘s streamlined cars were built by Pullman.
Although this ad portrays the train in olive green, the streamlined cars built by Pullman for the Choctaw Rocket were actually unpainted stainless steel as can be seen in this 1956 photo.
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Wikipedia says that the Choctaw Rocket went as far as Tucumcari “at least until 1949,” but I think someone misread a timetable. Both this brochure and a 1948 timetable that was once posted on the web by the now-defunct Rock Island Technical Society show the train terminating at Amarillo. The Memphis-Californian continued to serve the Memphis-Tucumcari route until the end of 1949, when it was replaced by (or renamed) the Cherokee, probably because the Californian itself had been renamed the Imperial.
The Pullman-built cars shown in this brochure and the above ad were used on the Choctaw route only until 1953, when they were replaced by Budd RDCs, at which time the train was renamed the Choctaw Rockette. Although RDCs would have been pretty uncomfortable as an overnight train, the downgrade effectively recognized that the Cherokee was the premiere train on the route that would be used by most long-distance travelers, while the Rockette was used mainly by short-distance riders and riders who didn’t want to get on or off the Cherokee at stations served by that train late at night.
This PDF of this brochure was generously provided by Streamliner Memories reader Bill Hough. Mr. Hough also provided PDFs of about a dozen other brochures that I’ll present over the next several weeks.