During the war, the Super Chief‘s famous 39-3/4-hour schedule from Chicago to Los Angeles was increased by two hours, probably because the War Production Board decided that freight should have a higher priority. This brochure announces the return to “popular peacetime schedules” on June 2, 1946.
Click image to download an 8.0-MB PDF of this brochure from Bill Hough’s collection.
The brochure also announces the return of direct service to the Grand Canyon on the Grand Canyon Limited, which at the time was also Santa Fe’s train to the San Francisco Bay Area. To serve southern Californians going to the park, the brochure introduced a new train, the El Tovar.
The Grand Canyon Limited didn’t actually go to the Grand Canyon, but the El Tovar did, so passengers from Los Angeles could get to the rim of the canyon without changing trains. Sleeping car passengers from the east would have their cars transferred to the El Tovar at Williams, but coach passengers would have to make an across-the-platform transfer at 4:30 am. Even worse, the Grand Canyon Limited from the San Francisco Bay Area arrived in Williams at 11:15 pm, forcing passengers to spend a short night in the town before taking a 5:20 am train to the canyon rim. The return trip was just as bad, with their train from the canyon arriving in Williams at 10:20 pm and the train to the Bay Area departing at 4:50 am.
The El Tovar didn’t last long as a separately named train, as the Grand Canyon Limited was soon rerouted to Los Angeles with a connecting train to San Francisco.