1950s

The new streamliner City of San Francisco was the fastest thing on wheels between San Francisco and Chicago. For three days, its 226 passengers and crew were cut off as rescuers struggled to dig them out. Help arrived just as hope began to dim. It was late Sunday morning, Jan. ... Read More »

MS Oranje, later known as MS Angelina Lauro, was a passenger liner, a wartime hospital ship, and finally a cruise ship that was lost while being towed for scrap. She sank in a storm in the mid-Pacific, on 24 September 1979. The stricken cruise ship, MS Achille Lauro, smoldering in ... Read More »

Southern Pacific’s premier trains the Shasta Daylight, and the Cascade served the northwest from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle from the 1950s into the 1960s. They served dozens of California, Oregon and Washington cities. The Shasta was popular with tourists and the Cascade, a favorite with business people. THE ... Read More »

Southern Pacific’s deluxe streamliner Lark was the premiere overnight passenger between San Francisco and Los Angeles. A favorite of businessmen and movie stars. The Oakland Lark connected with the Lark at San Jose then via San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara to Southern California along the coast route. The Lark rivaled ... Read More »

On April 13, 1962, America’s last night boat service ended as the Old Bay Line’s steamers made there final voyages on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay ending service between Baltimore and Norfolk. Known officially as the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, which had come to be known as the Old ... Read More »

The Southern Pacific’s Streamliner Coast Daylight was the West’s finest train in the 1940s, 50s and early 1960s, linking Los Angeles and San Francisco on a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred breathless mile. The streamliner traveled along the coast ... Read More »

Have you wondered where the much-overused phrase “the red carpet treatment” originated? It all started with the 20th Century Limited. The train of tycoons and movie stars. The “Century” was an express all-Pullman passenger train operated by the New York Central nightly from New York to Chicago. From 1938 until ... Read More »

Pianist, gossip columnist, TV star, and above all a giver of great parties, Elsa Maxwell was famous for being herself. She was most likely far more interesting than the celebrities she covered. Elsa Maxwell first worked as a theatre pianist after leaving school at the age of 14 and before ... Read More »

Pennsylvania’s express train between New York and Washington D.C. was featured in Alfred  Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. The 1951 American psychological thriller film noir was based on the 1950 novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. Director Producer Alfred Hitchcock shot the hit movie in the autumn of ... Read More »