In 1946, railroads aspired to replace their aging passenger equipment that was worn out from the Depression and war. Anticipating a boom in rail travel, they ordered thousands of new cars from the three main builders, Pullman, Budd, and ACF. The builders were unable to immediately meet the demand, and so railroads resorted to ads such as this one.
Click image to download a 3.4-MB PDF of this brochure.
The cover shows Diesels pulling fluted, stainless steel passenger cars. The inside pages show the top halves of the cars painted bright red with bare stainless steel below the window line. These pictures supposedly represent “an even finer, more luxurious Golden State Limited” that was “streamlined” and “new cars are being placed in service as fast as the builder turns them out.”
The brochure is dated May 1946 and the cover says the new train would be “ready June 2.” In fact, the only thing new about the train was the Diesel locomotives and a faster schedule because Diesel didn’t have to stop for fuel and water every hundred miles or so.
While the brochure might have been honest in staying that new cars would be added as fast as Pullman turned them out, many of the cars were still heavyweights. Comparing the March and June timetables shows the “new” train still used, for the most part, the same heavyweight sleeping cars. The only streamlined sleeper were the through New York-Los Angeles cars that were contributed by New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads.
The new train also added a coffee shop car, which may or may not have been streamlined, and two chair cars in place of the tourist sleepers that had been on the previous train, though these may not have been streamlined either. The other change is that the previous lounge car had a barber and shower-bath while the new one had a radio, which isn’t a great trade-off. Again, I’m not certain that the new lounge car was streamlined.
While the new schedule was much faster, dropping from about 60 hours to 49, it was still 10 hours slower than the twice-a-week City of Los Angeles and Super Chief trains. To belatedly meet this competition, Rock Island and Southern Pacific had agreed in January 1946 to each buy new train sets that would cover three trips a week between Chicago and Los Angeles in 39-3/4 hours.
As noted on page 3 of this brochure, that new train would be called the Golden Rocket and it was this train, with its gaudy red top and stainless steel below the window line, that was pictured in the brochure, not the Golden State Limited. The brochure promised that this train would be “starting early in 1947.”
Alas, Pullman wasn’t able to deliver the first Golden Rocket train set until 1948. In the meantime, in June 1947 the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued an order limiting passenger trains to 79 miles per hour except where the railroads had sophisticated signaling equipment (something like positive train control). Southern Pacific wasn’t willing to pay the cost of such signals, and the Golden Rocket couldn’t meet the 39-3/4-hour schedule without higher speeds on SP’s portion of the route, so the Rocket was cancelled. It was too late anyway because by the time the first train had been delivered both UP and Santa Fe and boosted their 39-3/4-hour trains to daily service.
In early 1947, Rock Island and Southern Pacific dropped the word “limited” from Golden State Limited. But the streamlined name did not necessarily mean the train was fully streamlined, and the two railroads did not claim it to be streamlined until January 1948. At that time they reduced the train’s time to 45 hours — better than 49 but still not as fast as 39-3/4.
There were a lot of moving parts here. It is true that the signaling requirement was an issue, but I think that SP may have been reluctant in general to improve a line that did not generate much freight traffic, even though those freights ran at nowhere near 79 MPH.
Even as early as 1946 there were signs that SP was getting cold feet. Don Russell, then the executive VP, cautioned his boss Ted Mercier about the need to be cautious in purchasing sleeping cars, instead arguing that they should “energetically” go after coach business, since that rolling stock could be used “in any forecast that can be made.”
The Golden State was never really meant to compete with the Super Chief or City of Los Angeles. Once it became fully streamlined, its actual competition was the Chief. Both ran on 45 hour schedules between Chicago and Los Angeles, and often leaving their respective terminals at exactly the same time, e.g. 12:30 PM eastbound and 10 PM or 1 PM westbound.
Should also add that Rock Island’s ad might be called “polishing a turd.” What the participating roads had to sell was direct service to Tucson and Phoenix, something neither ATSF or UP could claim, as well as service to Palm Springs via the North Palm Springs station. You know what they say about hindsight, but a shift in passenger tastes was starting, with business travelers migrating to airlines. Leisure travelers were making up a larger portion of the customer base, and tourism destinations like the desert resorts should have been featured more prominently in their advertising.
Sgt. Joe,
You are right that the Golden State Limited was in a class with the Chief and Los Angeles Limited. RI/SP had kept up with the Santa Fe and Union Pacific’s premiere trains until the streamlined era, when they fell behind. The Golden Rocket was meant to be the train equal to the Super Chief and City of Los Angeles, which is why I compare RI/SP services to those trains.
And the Chief, even after coaches were added in 1954 would have been the flagship on many or most other railroads. The 1954 Chief had coaches, but it also had sleeping cars that featured compartments and drawing rooms, Fred Harvey meal service, and a Big Dome lounge car. The schedule was tightened from 45 hours to 39-3/4 hours, to allow one-night-out service westbound, a schedule that has not been replicated in the Amtrak era.