The schedules in this timetable are unchanged from 1957 except for the westbound California Zephyr. That train left Salt Lake City at the same time as in 1957 but arrived in Oakland an hour and five minutes later. Passengers enjoyed a few more minutes of daylight travel across the Sierra Nevada and still arrived in San Francisco in time for dinner.

Click image to download a 4.8-MB PDF of this 8-page timetable.

Like many of the timetables we’ve seen, this one notes that “all times shown in this folder are standard time.” The railroads hated daylight savings time, partly because they ran 24 hour operations so the transitions from one to another were major headaches. Continue reading →

While the timetable schedules didn’t change between 1950 and 1952, there are some changes in today’s 1954 timetable. The eastbound California Zephyr operated 30 minutes later and the westbound 30 minutes earlier in 1954 than in 1952. The eastbound Zephyrette operated three hours earlier, while westbound it was only a few minutes earlier.

Click image to download a 4.0-MB PDF of this 8-page timetable.

One minor point to note is that Western Pacific didn’t print the effective date of these timetables on the cover. This wouldn’t matter if the times didn’t change but it could be important when they did. The date of each timetable was listed inside, but the location wasn’t consistent. In 1952, for example, it was on page 6, while in 1954 it was on page 3. This could lead to confusion and I’d be surprised if some passengers didn’t miss trains because they were unknowingly using out-of-date timetables.

The Interstate Commerce Commission responded to Western Pacific’s application to discontinue train 1 & 2, formerly called the Royal Gorge, by allowing the railroad to reduce it from daily to tri-weekly service. To provide this service, the railroad purchased two Rail Diesel Cars from the Budd Company. Although the train kept the numbers, 1 & 2, it was renamed the Zephyrette, which also happened to be the term used to describe the California Zephyr‘s on-board stewardesses.

Click image to download a 4.3-MB PDF of this 8-page timetable.

RDCs were able to stop and accelerate faster than the steam train they replaced, allowing Western Pacific to cut 40 minutes from the schedule of westbound train 1 and 90 minutes from eastbound train 2. They also cost less than half as much to operate as the steam train. Although they operated only three days a week, two RDCs were needed because their 24-hour schedule didn’t leave enough time to service the car between trips and as scheduled the eastbound and westbound trips heavily overlapped. Continue reading →