Page 2 of this and the other post-war New York Central timetables shown here recently advertise the coast-to-coast sleeping cars offered by the Central and connecting railroads. I’ve previously told the story of these cars, but the trains used for some of these through cars shifted over time.
Click image to download a 31.5-MB PDF of this 52-page timetable.
There were three routes from Chicago to Los Angeles. The premiere connection may have been between the 20th Century Limited and the Chief. This delivered the westbound through car to Los Angeles in 65-1/2 hours and the eastbound car to New York in just 65 hours, both faster than the Chicago-Los Angeles trains from the mid-1920s.
Over the Union Pacific route, the Los Angeles Limited carried a car west from Advance Commodore Vanderbilt, while the eastbound Los Angeles Limited delivered a car to the Lake Shore Limited. The westbound route took 4 hours and 10 minutes longer than the 20th Century/Chief combination while the eastbound route was five hours longer. Both of these routes were unchanged from the 1949 timetable shown here a couple of days ago.
Changes were made, however, in the connection with the Golden State Route. Although not the most prestigious route, it should have been the fastest, as both Rock Island and New York Central operated out of the same Chicago train station, so it wasn’t necessary to transfer the through cars from one station to another.
In 1949, however, the westbound Golden State received its connecting Pullman from a slow New York Central train called the Chicagoan. This made the New York-Los Angeles trip almost 4 hours longer than the 20th Century/Chief connection. Eastbound worked better as the Golden State delivered a car to the Fifth Avenue Special with only a one-hour layover in LaSalle Street Station, making the Los Angeles-New York trip 2-2/3 hours faster than the 20th Century/Chief route, which had a 5-1/2-hour layover in Chicago.
By the time of today’s 1951 timetable, the westbound connection with the Golden State had been changed to the faster Lake Shore Limited while the eastbound connection was with the Commodore II. The Chicago layovers were a little longer than in 1949 but still much shorter than either the Santa Fe or Union Pacific connections. Going over the Golden State route, the westbound through car reached Los Angeles in 85 fewer minutes than on the 20th Century/Chief, while the eastbound car was 45 minutes faster (but slower than it had been when using the Fifth Avenue Special).