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Santa Fe Streamliners The Chiefs and their Tribesmen by Karl Zimmermann SC
Santa Fe Streamliners The Chiefs and their Tribesmen by Karl Zimmermann
Soft Cover
Copyright 1987
112 pages
CONTENTS
Remembering the Super Chief
Predecessors
A Super Train
Proliferation
Postwar Improvements
Domes and Hi-Levels
Meals by Fred Harvey
The Passing of the Chiefs
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Stepping out under the umbrella sheds at Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal on an August evening in 1969 with my wife Laurel, I saw stretched before me a silver train, glimmering with allure in the half light of dusk. The windows of bedrooms and roomettes glowed cozily, promising rest and comfort, a home (albeit temporary) on the way to home. Up ahead, multiple diesel units, anxious to be off on their jaunt more than half way across the continent, chanted impatiently.
We passed by Pullmans-Pine Beach, Indian Squaw, Regal Court-until we reached our own. At the vestibule our porter, resplendent in dark-blue livery, waited to show us to our bedroom and help with our bags. No sooner had we settled in than we felt the gentle tug signaling the beginning of our 2,222-mile journey through the infinite variety of America.
This was the Santa Fe's final version of the Super Chief, even then a train worth talking about and easy to recommend. At a time when virtually all other passenger trains in the United States were a shambles, it remained clean, impeccably maintained, well staffed, and equipped in a reasonable equivalent of the grand manner through which it originally gained its fame.
The Super Chief had been synonymous with excellence ever since its inauguration in 1936 as a once-a-week, extra-fare, luxury heavyweight train. The Super was equipped the next year with cars in the then-new streamliner mode. In 1938 its frequency doubled, to twice weekly. In 1946 it was increased to every-other-day and in 1948 to daily. The equipment in use into the first years of the Amtrak era was introduced in 1950 and 1951 and received a major refurbishing in 1958. The train aged well and had a crisp, new feeling even when we rode in 1969. Right up until Amtrak took over two years later, Santa Fe offered Super Chief passengers convenience, courtesy, comfort, and a renewal of acquaintance with America.
The essential ingredient was the railroad's awareness that aesthetics are as important an element of travel as speed-though speed had been the Super's original claim to fame. Getting from one place to the other is not for the civilized voyager the sole aim of travel; equally important is what happens along the way. On the Super Chief, "first class" continued to mean more than a few extra inches of seat.
The Santa Fe, like Kubla Khan, had decreed a "Pleasure Dome," which Pullman-Standard was pleased to supply back in 1950. This fine lounge car, borrowing both name and spirit from poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was luxurious and unusual. The main area was softly lighted and reminiscent of a tastefully furnished living room. It was just right for reading, watching the passing landscape, or engaging in conversation.
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