SP July 1943 Peninsula Timetable

As far as I can tell, San Francisco was the only major city west of Chicago to be served by commuter trains — passenger trains serving mainly commuters that operated on the same tracks as freight trains — before 1980. This timetable shows that Southern Pacific offered 27 trains each way per weekday trains from San Francisco to San Jose, with different schedules on weekends.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this 2-page timetable.

A fare chart shows the one-way cost from San Francisco to San Jose was $1.05 (nearly $17 today). Fares for shorter distances were as low as 22¢.

A few trains went on to Los Gatos. The narrow-gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad, which had crossed the coastal mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz, had been taken over by Southern Pacific in 1887, which standardized the tracks when it repaired damage from the 1906 earthquake. However, the last passenger trains operated beyond Los Gatos in 1940, so in 1943 people heading to Santa Cruz took a Peerless Stages bus.


Comments

SP July 1943 Peninsula Timetable — 1 Comment

  1. St. Louis was served by commuter trains at one time. The Mopac and Frisco ran them in the early 1900’s. A fire at Union Station knocked out this service. However, Mopac ran one train from Pacific, Mo. for some time afterwards.

    Ken

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