Although this brochure was published by Santa Fe and mentions the California Limited, it was really an ad for Pullman. One side of the brochure has five large interior photos (plus the cover photo) showing Pullman accommodations. The other side is a cutaway view of a standard Pullman car, with 12 sections, a drawing room, and a compartment.

Click image to download a 3.7-MB PDF of this brochure.

The text accompanying the cutaway drawing is all about Pullman and its many improvements to sleeping car technologies. In 1925, it says, Pullman cars traveled 988 million miles carrying 34.5 million passengers and each car earned only $3.06 a day or 27 cents a passenger. By “earned” the brochure means net operating profit, not gross revenue.

“Fred Harvey immediately suggests the very best in railway meal service. The California Limited suggests the acme of limited trains,” says the brochure in about the only paragraph about services unique to the Santa Fe. Except for a list of Santa Fe passenger agents, almost all of the rest of the brochure is about Pullman, which means it would apply just as well to the Los Angeles Limited, Golden State, or secondary trains on the Chicago-Los Angeles route. I hope Pullman paid for most of the cost of this brochure, for if it didn’t Santa Fe got ripped off.