This timetable came out nearly 13 years later than yesterday’s, but followed a similar format: condensed timetables in the beginning, then eight pages of maps, followed by detailed timetables. Like yesterday’s and all of the Santa Fe timetables that will be presented in the next month, this one is from scans donated by the Streamliner Memories reader who also donated most of October’s Union Pacific timetables and all of the Southern Pacific timetables presented here since then, to whom we are all grateful.
Click image to download a 33.3-MB PDF of this 56-page timetable.
Santa Fe train names in 1926 were a little more creative than in 1913. The premiere train was still the California Limited (trains 3 & 4), an all-Pullman train that only went to Los Angeles. This was supplemented by the Navajo (trains 9 & 2), the Scout (1 & 10), and the Missionary (21 & 22), all of which had cars going to both L.A. and Oakland. The first two went via Raton Pass while the latter two went via Amarillo.
As in 1913, only the California Limited had dining car service for the entire trip. The others apparently had no diners west of Kansas City. Fred Harvey “dining stations” were listed on pages 13 and 14 PDF page 7).
The back cover advertises winter excursion fares of $143.78 round trip between Chicago and California. That’s about $2,300 in today’s dollars. A full-page ad for the Grand Canyon is on the inside back cover.
The cover is signed “Vincent N. Ashmore, Age 11.” That was most likely Vincent Noel Ashmore, who was born in July, 1914 (making him 11 in February 1926) in Birmingham, Illinois, about 45 miles from Santa Fe’s main line. Ashmore served in the marines, possibly during World War II, but apparently lived most of the rest of his life in Illinois, dying in 2004 just a few miles away in Macomb at the age of 90.