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$40 to California & Arizona in 1932

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Train LoverNovember 1, 2022

Driven by the Depression, Santa Fe dropped its one-way fare between Chicago and California to just $40 in the summer of 1932. Fares from St. Louis and New Orleans to California were even lower, just $36.50. These compare with $90.30 for a round trip (which was usually a little less than twice one way) from Chicago and $85.60 from St. Louis in Summer, 1928.

Click image to download a 835-KB PDF of this brochure.

While those sound like great prices, $40 in 1932 is almost $900 today while $36.50 is around $800. Moreover, working-class people who had jobs in 1932 would have had to work as many hours as it would take people in the same jobs today to earn around $2,700. Thus, the lower fares were still prohibitive for most people, even those who had jobs, in the 1930s. Continue reading →

Santa Fe Winter Fares in 1931

Posted on December 18, 2022 by Train LoverNovember 1, 2022

Like Florida, California was once considered a winter tourist destination, so winter fares were higher than in the summer. This brochure lists “Xcursion” round-trip fares from points in the Midwest and East to various cities in California and New Mexico, as well as Mexico City and Phoenix.

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this brochure.

Pricing was a lot less sophisticated than it is today, when Amtrak and many airlines and bus companies sell the first tickets on any given trip for low prices and the prices increase as the planes, trains, or buses fill up. Instead, in early 20th century, all tickets on a given class of service went for pretty much the same price per passenger-mile, though there might be discounts for round trips and extra fares for deluxe trains. Continue reading →

Stop Off & Visit Grand Canyon 1930 & 1932

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Train LoverNovember 1, 2022

We’ve previously seen a 1926 brochure with this title. Today, we have two more, one from 1930 and one from 1932. The fronts of all three brochures are nearly identical, though a few names and addresses on Santa Fe’s list of representatives have changed and the two photos beneath the map were updated in 1932 to account, in one case, for newer motor buses.

Click image to download a 2.5-MB PDF of this brochure.

Five of the eight photos on the back were updated in 1930, again in some cases to account for newer motor vehicle styles. Two more photos were updated in the 1932 edition. Continue reading →

Southern Arizona and its Guest Ranches

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Train LoverNovember 1, 2022

When Southern Pacific built across southern Arizona in 1880, it went through Tuscon, not Phoenix. At the time, Tucson, with more than 7,000 people, was by far Arizona’s largest city, while Phoenix was a comparative village of 1,700 people.

Click image to download a 18.0-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet, which is from the David Rumsey map collection.

By 1920, Phoenix had surpassed Tucson and was the home of a growing number of resorts, but passengers to Phoenix had to get off the Southern Pacific at Maricopa and take an Arizona Eastern Railroad McKeen motor car 35 miles. To save its posh guests from this fate, in 1926 Southern Pacific spent $15 million (about $250 million in today’s money) building a new line from Wellton to Phoenix, allowing it to run its transcontinental trains through the state’s capital city. The new route was still about 43 miles longer than the old one, but (at least in 1929) the Sunset Limited, Golden State, and Californian used the new route while the Apache and Argonaut continued to use the shorter one. Continue reading →

The Los Angeles Limited in 1930

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Train LoverNovember 2, 2022

Santa Fe’s introduction of the Chief in 1926 led Union Pacific and Rock Island-Southern Pacific to match the Santa Fe train’s 63-hour schedules as well as its extra fares of as much as $10. They also met Santa Fe’s reduction of the schedule to 61 hours in 1928. However, when Santa Fe reduced the Chief‘s schedule to 58 hours in June, 1929, UP and RI-SP were unable to match it so both dropped the extra fares.

UP used a gold ink in the box surrounding the words “Los Angeles Limited” on the cover of this booklet. However, this is another case of a print color that can’t be digitally reproduced, so it appears brown here. Click image to download a 2.3-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet.

As a result, the opening page of this booklet describing the Los Angeles Limited promises “No extra fare” even though the timetable inside shows a 61-hour schedule that was much faster than any other UP train between Chicago and Los Angeles. By 1933, UP would add coaches to the train, but in 1930 the LA Limited was still an all-Pullman train offering a barber, valet, and a “well-trained colored servant” to provide manicuring and hairdressing services for woman. Continue reading →

The Golden State in 1929

Posted on December 14, 2022 by Train LoverOctober 20, 2023

We’ve seen this Maurice Logan painting on the cover of a 1928 Southern Pacific booklet. Today’s booklet has the same cover illustration, but the interior content is very different. For one thing, this one is 32 pages long vs. 16 for the SP booklet. The text and all, or nearly all, of the photos are also different.

Click image to download a 14.0-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet.

The above cover, as was typical of both Rock Island and Southern Pacific booklets of that era, is the back cover. The front cover of the SP booklet was a Maurice Logan painting of redwoods. The front cover of today’s booklet is the same painting of Carriso Gorge that was in a Rock Island booklet presented here about a week ago. In that booklet, the painting was too dark to read the signature of the artist, but today’s clearly reads “W.H. Bull.” Continue reading →

Travel Comfort

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Train LoverOctober 22, 2022

Although this brochure was published by Santa Fe and mentions the California Limited, it was really an ad for Pullman. One side of the brochure has five large interior photos (plus the cover photo) showing Pullman accommodations. The other side is a cutaway view of a standard Pullman car, with 12 sections, a drawing room, and a compartment.

Click image to download a 3.7-MB PDF of this brochure.

The text accompanying the cutaway drawing is all about Pullman and its many improvements to sleeping car technologies. In 1925, it says, Pullman cars traveled 988 million miles carrying 34.5 million passengers and each car earned only $3.06 a day or 27 cents a passenger. By “earned” the brochure means net operating profit, not gross revenue. Continue reading →

The Santa Fe Chief in 1926

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Train LoverOctober 23, 2022

On November 14, 1926, after eight winters of not running the de Luxe, Santa Fe inaugurated the Chief. Significantly, the railway didn’t include the word “limited” in the name, hinting that this train, like the de Luxe, was even better than a limited. “The Chief is frankly designed for people who want the best,” says this booklet, which was published a few weeks after the inaugural run.

Click image to download a 7.4-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

This booklet was published in December for the train’s first “season,” a throwback to the de Luxe that only operated in the winters and had a $25 extra fare. However, as the booklet notes, “The Chief is far more magnificent; it leaves daily, instead of weekly, and it costs less than half the old extra charge,” namely a $10 extra fare (about $130 in today’s money). Continue reading →

Southern Pacific July 1923 Timetable

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Train LoverDecember 11, 2022

The tops of most pages of this timetable have helpful admonitions, such as “Fire Destroys – Save the Forests”; travel advice, such as “Santa Cruz Big Trees – Easily Reached”; or outright ads, such as “Eight Trains Daily, Each Way, Between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” One treads across two pages: “The Apache Trail of Arizona ‘All Motor Mountain Trip’ A Wonderful Scenic Trip Detour from Maricopa or Bowie,” but then warns that “No Service During July or August.”

Click image to download a 27.9-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

Beyond that, many of the train names are unfamiliar to someone more used to post-war timetables. Instead of the Apache, the secondary train on the Golden State route is the Californian, while the secondary train on the Sunset route was the Sunset Express (which wasn’t much of an express as it took almost a full day longer than the Sunset Limited). The Daylight Limited operated non-stop between San Francisco and Los Angeles, while other trains populating the Coast route included the Padre, the Shoreline Limited, the Lark, and of course the Sunset Limited and Sunset Express, both of which went all the way from New Orleans to San Francisco in those days. Continue reading →

Four Gateways to the Pacific Coast

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Train LoverOctober 23, 2022

This 1923 booklet has an unusual format. Instead of the typical 8″x9″ pages, this one’s pages are 16″x9″. The cover shown below is the left side of the back cover. The text begins on the right side of the back cover, then continues on the front cover. It must have been confusing for people to read.

Click image to download a 26.3-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet, which is from the David Rumsey map collection.

The booklet’s basic pitch, of course, is that passengers can choose from “four great routes” to California. We’ve seen booklets with this theme several times before (for example, 1939, 1940, and 1946), but this is the oldest I’ve found so far. Continue reading →