The Gold Coast was gone in 1955. To keep up the appearance of three trains per day between Chicago and Los Angeles, this timetable lists the San Francisco Overland combined with the City of St. Louis as a possible route. The timetable indicates, however, that no cars went all the way from Chicago to L.A. on this schedule; instead, westbound passengers would have to make an across-the-platform transfer in Ogden at 8:45 pm and eastbound at 6:05 am, which doesn’t sound very convenient.
Click image to download a 23.6-MB PDF of this 52-page timetable.
The back cover of the timetable (which was contributed by a Streamliner Memories reader) notes that Astra Dome Coaches and Astra Dome Observation Lounge cars had been added to the Challenger and City of Portland, while the City of Los Angeles had dome-lounge cars. The advertisement also said that Astra Dome Diners for the two City trains would be added soon.
The “equipment” listing for the City of Los Angeles said that it had a reclining seat coach. However, most long-distance coach passengers were probably encouraged to take the Challenger instead, while I suspect the COLA coach was mainly for short-distance riders.
While laying out the scans of this timetable to convert it to a PDF, I realized that the index of stations found on pages 3 through 5 hadn’t noticeably changed since 1951. UP would continue using the same three pages at least through 1959. While the times of trains might have changed and some trains were dropped, UP kept the same trains and timetables on the same pages throughout most of the 1950s.