The Air-Conditioned Pacific Limited

This 1940 brochure notes that the Pacific Limited was “completely air conditioned,” including both coaches and Pullmans. The Pacific Limited was a distinctly secondary train on the Chicago-San Francisco route, a cut above the Challenger but not as luxurious as the all-Pullman Overland Limited nor as fast as the streamlined City of San Francisco or semi-streamlined Forty Niner and Treasure Island Special.


Click image to download a PDF of this 8-panel brochure.

The timetable in this brochure says the train required about 60 hours westbound and 62 hours eastbound. That’s faster than the 72 hours required by trains only a few years before, but nowhere near the 39-3/4-hour timetables of the streamliners. Of course, in 1940 the streamliners only operated every second day in the summers and every third day the rest of the year. The Pacific Limited‘s schedule was probably not a great deal slower than the Overland Limited.


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