The map inside of this timetable folder has a thick red line showing the route of the California Zephyr from Oakland to Chicago. The same style of line shows Western Pacific branches to Bieber, Loyalton, Moy, and San Jose, California; Reno; and several small towns in Utah even though those branches did not have any passenger service. Plus the same red line is used to show the routes of the New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads between Chicago and New York City.
Click image to download a 4.3-MB PDF of this timetable from the Ellery Goode collection.
The lines to New York City are shown because one sleeping car went through from Oakland to New York every day, alternating on the Central and Pennsy routes. The timetable doesn’t say so, but when on the PRR the car went on the General eastbound and on the slightly slower Pennsylvania Limited westbound. On the New York Central it went on the Commodore Vanderbilt in both directions.
The timetable also shows a connection to St. Louis from Omaha via the Missouri Pacific. Because there were no through cars on this route, it is not shown in red on the map.
In addition to the California Zephyr, the timetable presents the schedule of the Zephyrette, Western Pacific’s rail Diesel car that operated between Oakland and Salt Lake City. The RDC took about 23 hours to make the trip, compared to 18 on the California Zephyr. The difference was mainly because the Zephyrette made 36 more stops than the Zephyr. Unlike the CZ, which was timed to show the magnificent Feather River Canyon in daylight, the Zephyrette spent its daytime hours in the somewhat bleaker eastern Nevada and western Utah.
This is the last of 42 timetables whose scans were contributed by Streamliner Memories reader Ellery Goode. Once again, I thank him for his hard work.
IIRC, the last year the CZ turned a profit was 1957 or 1958. The problem was that once the RDC was gone, all of the passenger department expense were charged to just one train, the CZ. As early as 1965 or 1966 WP was trying to discontinue the CZ, and the problem was that if any one of the 3 roads pulled out, that was the end of the Zephyr.
Interestingly enough, Lew Menk, who was no fan of passenger trains, exchanged letters with Myron Christy at the time WP was pursuing its train-off application. Menk observed that the Zephyr was still a profitable operation…for CB & Q, and therefore the Q would be taking an adversarial position against WP in the matter.
Besides the CZ pool cars, the two RDCs were the only passenger equipment the railroad owned. They were primarily a freight line, and only got into passenger service to add competition to the ATSF/UP Chicago to LA runs.
The two RDCs (375, 376) – both RDC-2s having a small baggage section on one end, had the most traveled miles of any RDC at the time of their retirement exceeding 1,000,000 miles each.