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 … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Name-train booklet
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 … Continue reading
We’ve previously seen booklets for the 1900-1901, 1904-1905, and 1906-1907 winter seasons. The one here, for the 1908-1909 season, says it is the “Fourteenth Season.” That suggests that the train didn’t operate for three seasons between 1892 and 1904 (which … Continue reading
One of the theses that I am exploring since November 20th is that competition stimulated railroads to develop and improve limited trains. The Golden Gate Special, which was probably the first named train to reach the West Coast, is an … Continue reading
In the 1920s, the New York Central and Pennsylvania were the only railroads that could take passengers between New York and Chicago in 20 hours, but they still had to compete with other railroads for East Coast-Midwest passengers. The most … Continue reading
This booklet pertains more to urban transit than to intercity passenger trains, but someone gave it to me with some other items, so I’ll include it here. Pittsburgh once had at least 17 different inclined planes — railcars that went … Continue reading
We’ve previously seen a name-train booklet for the first Daylight train. This one is much fancier, with full color illustrations of train interiors and exteriors. It wasn’t unusual for railroads to produce two booklets to introduce new trains, one for … Continue reading
In 1954, Canadian National advertised that it had made the largest order of new passenger cars in history, a total of 359 cars. These cars were streamlined, of course, and made significant improvements over the heavyweight cars that preceded them. … Continue reading
This 44-page book dating from 1892 has woodcuts of prominent buildings and scenery on almost every page to accompany the text describing the route of this Chicago-New York train. The logo of Rand McNally, which printed the booklet, also adorns … Continue reading
The Pacemaker was New York Central’s premiere all-coach train serving the New York-Chicago corridor, competing directly with Pennsy’s Trail Blazer. Like the Trail Blazer, the Pacemaker was introduced in 1939 with heavyweight equipment modified in 1941 to look streamlined, then … Continue reading