TRAINS

LOS ANGELES — Getting to Las Vegas from Los Angeles has always been problematic. Flying is fast but expensive. Driving is cheap but slow. In just a few years, however, there will be another option: a train that will whisk visitors across California and into Nevada in half as long ... Read More »

The City of Las Vegas was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Union Pacific Railroad between Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles, California from 1956 until 1968. It operated from 1956 to 1968. It was one of several trains to operate with the experimental General Motors Aerotrain, although this experiment was ... Read More »

The Southern Pacific’s Streamliner Coast Daylight was the West’s finest train in the 1940s, 50s, and early 1960s. It hugged the Pacific Ocean with great views. Linking Los Angeles and San Francisco on a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred ... Read More »

“Elvis who?” On the threshold of fame, Elvis took the train. Photographer Alfred Wertheimer recalls uttering that very question in early 1956. A publicist from RCA Victor Records had contacted him, asking if he was available to photograph a young singer named Elvis Presley. “I’d never heard of the man,” ... Read More »

Southern Pacific’s deluxe all-Pullman 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 ... Read More »

Pullman porters were men hired to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars.[1] Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. Their job was to carry passengers’ baggage, shine shoes, set up and maintain the sleeping berths, ... Read More »

David Bowie, who starred in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, had a long-standing fear of flying. Bowie sailed aboard Cunard’s QE 2, the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci, P&O-Orient Line’s Oronsay and Canberra along with many other ships.   So while other superstars would take the Concorde or ... Read More »

This is the first in a series of blogs on the Mexican railway service. These are scenes of Buena Vista Terminal in Mexico City and school children visiting on a morning sometime in the early 1970s. Buena Vista was built in 1961, replacing the older terminal. It was vast and ... Read More »

Premiere Passenger Trains during the 1950s were the finest in the world. With excellent meals, suburb Pullman service, dinner in the diner, club lounges, train secretaries, barbershops, cocktail bars, observation cars… trains like the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, and the California Zypher were world-famous.   New York Central’s streamlined ... Read More »

In the 1957 musical film Pal Joey, Frank Sinatra gets off a Southern Pacific train and then heads across the SF bay to San Francisco,  aboard one of the SP Ferry Boats. Oakland Long Wharf was the western terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad. From there, ferries carried both commuters ... Read More »