Southern Pacific April 1956 Timetable

Southern Pacific’s diminishing enthusiasm for passenger trains is revealed in the front cover ad of this system timetable, which is more about freight service than passenger. “More miles of rail line,” it says, “more freight cars, more piggyback.” It does mention “streamliners on more scenic routes” but this is deemphasized by skewing the text and making it hard to read.

Click image to download a 19.9-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

Despite declining ridership, the printer’s mark says that 175,000 copies of this timetable were printed, up from 90,000 in 1950 but down from 200,000 in 1952. Like yesterday’s condensed timetable, this one has numerous muddy photographs of train interiors, most of which fail to entice. However, page 19 has a photo of the “spectacular dome lounge on the San Francisco Overland between San Francisco and Ogden.” The lounge ends of SP’s dome-lounges were spectacular since the floor was at a lower level but the dome was above creating a cathedral-like effect.


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