This timetable was issued just four months after the previous one shown here, so there are only a few changes. The biggest may be that the schedule for the Gold Coast between Chicago and San Francisco was tightened up by 2-1/2 hours. All three railroads that operated the train — C&NW, UP, and SP — were able to remove time from the schedule. This speed-up may reflect the replacement of steam locomotives with Diesels, reducing the number of stops for water or to change engines.
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The Gold Coast had been inaugurated as a slightly slower, budget-priced alternative to the Overland Limited in 1926, but it was cancelled due to the Depression in 1931. The name was revived in October 1947 as a replacement for the San Francisco Challenger and Pacific Limited, both of which were also budget trains that ran about an hour apart. Despite 1953’s faster schedule, the heavyweight Gold Coast would disappear from the timetable forever at the end of 1954 as UP’s growing streamliner fleet was able to accommodate the shrinking number of passengers.