Like the overnight Chicago-Denver trains, the two-night Chicago-Pacific Coast City trains were timed to minimize the loss of business hours. This worked especially well westbound, the direction in which time zones work in the traveler’s favor. During the late 1930s, both the City of Portland and the City of Los Angeles left Chicago at 6:15 pm and arrived at their namesake cities at 8:00 am of the second day.
Click to download a 4.1-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet about the City of Los Angeles.
This brochure describes the amenities travelers could expect to find aboard the City of Los Angeles. The brochure is dated 1950, but it states, “on some units of the ‘City of Los Angeles’ there is an observation-lounge on the rear of the train.” This tells us that the the M-10002 was still likely to be working the Los Angeles route, as this train, unlike the later ones, did not have an observation-lounge.