The front cover of this timetable heralds an award given to Southern Pacific for having progressive passenger service in 1950. The award was given out by the Federation for Railway Progress, one of the efforts by maverick financier Robert Young to revolutionize the rail industry. Young thought that the Association of American Railroads was a bunch of old fogies, so he started a rival organization.
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shut down four months later.
Young famously fought a proxy war to gain control of the seemingly powerful New York Central Railroad only to find that it was near bankruptcy. The war cost him and some of his allies a lot of money and Young, who was probably manic-depressive, shot himself in January, 1958. Left without its main supporter, the Federation for Railway ProgressSouthern Pacific, which in a few years would be reviled by passenger-train fans as being anti-passenger, probably deserved the progress award as much as any other railway. In the three or four years before 1950, SP had streamlined the Sunset Limited, Shasta Daylight, Cascade, Golden State, and many other trains. On the other hand, in the post-war years every major railroad was streamlining their most important trains as fast as they could since the existing equipment had been worn out during the war and no one in the industry realized how fast intercity ridership would fall after the war ended.
Robert Young’s widow lived in their oceanfront Palm Beach mansion for decades after his death so I would have to say that he did not die broke.