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 in a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred breathless mile. Chair car passengers had full access ... Read More »
TRAINS
Cruise the Past: Before Amtrak – The Golden Age of American Passenger Trains
Premiere Passenger Trains during the 1930s, 1940s, and 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 ... Read More »
Why The US Has No High Speed Rail
The U.S. has no true high-speed trains, aside from sections of Amtrak’s Acela line in the Northeast Corridor. The Acela can reach 150 mph for only 34 miles of its 457-mile span. Its average speed between New York and Boston is about 65 mph. FLORIDA IS A HIT Virgin Rail ... Read More »
Santa Fe’s Streamliner SAN FRANCISCO CHIEF
The Santa Fe felt it needed its own streamliner serving the Bay Area and launched the San Francisco Chief in June 1954. The new express train joined Santa Fe’s other legacy trains: the Chief, Super Chief, and El Capitan. The San Franciso Chief offered First Class Pullman Sleeping Car and ... Read More »
PRIVATE TRAIN CARS: A look inside!
President Donald Trump’s “Mar-a-Lago” may be the closest proximity you might have to the illustrious society history of Post Cereals Heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post unless you charter her former private railway car. Originally christened Hussar, the car was built in 1922 for Post and her husband E.F. Hutton. The car ... Read More »
On the threshold of fame, ELVIS PRESLEY took the train from New York to Memphis in 1956.
“Elvis who?” 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,” Wertheimer told TIME Magazine in an article 40 years ... Read More »
Mid-Century – JANET LEIGH travels on the Super Chief – Train of the Stars
Star of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Janet Leigh is ready to board the famous SUPER CHIEF and Virginia Leith, star of A KISS BEFORE DYING shows us the all-Pullman train during the 1950s in a promotional film. Even the characters from TV’s MAD MEN may have been aboard the train all ... Read More »
Glory Days of Pullman Passenger Trains in Mexico
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 »