Nostalgia & History > (Not quite) the City of Everywhere, July 1968...

Green River, Wyoming. Eastbound "City of San Francisco" (at the least): July 21, 1968. We'd just stepped off; joined the train as SP 102 at Martinez CA the day before. Four hours to wait now for UP 105 to Shoshone.

Full consist below. Not that you can make it out back there, but because trains aren't just locomotives and deserve to be acknowledged. Especially ones anybody could ride. :-)

UP 936
UP 969B
UP 961
SP 6757 Baggage-Mail
SP 6647 Star Baggage
UP "Star Range" 11-Bedroom
UP "Pacific View" 10-6
UP 6101 Lounge
UP 4805 Diner
UP 5545 Legrest Coach
Milw 653 Legrest Coach
UP 5551 Legrest Coach
SP 2373 Legrest Coach
UP 4815 Diner (deadhead)
UP 4809 Diner (deadhead)

Cut out of SP 102 that morning at Odgen were SP Baggage-Dormitory 3106, SP Diner 10204, SP Dome Lounge 3604, SP Automatic Buffet Car 10614, and SP high-capacity non-legrest coach 2240 (for the "shorts"; passengers traveling shorter segments over SP only). The UP E-units replaced hard-working SP 3200, an SDP45. The single unit did get help over Donner; F7A with boiler controls 6387, still in Black Widow colors.

~ BZ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/12 17:55 by Notch16.

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Any shots of 102 between Martinez and Ogden, Bob?

and hoping for detail on your #105 that day

Ummm, "City of Everywhere". So was 102 combined with 104 at Green River that day? Or maybe "City of Everywhere" is false advertising for this thread, as it would not come into existence until some subsequent year?

Thanks in advance,

Rob L.

Rob, it seems like a short consist if combined. May have to check that.

105 shots were muddy; rain and slow shutter speed.

Few 102 shots; was saving film for The Great Unknown.

More E's will appear later!

~ BZ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/12 17:56 by Notch16.

Hopefully it can't be any form of CoLA,
with no dome at all. Probably the timetable
showed CoSF combining with CoLA at Ogden, but
they skipped the actual combining during summer?

IIRC, the City of Everwhere started in 1970. Consist looks like a pure COSF. Perhaps in the summer of 1968, UP didn't combine 102 and 104 because of length issue?

Weren't they doing the "Cheyenne Shuffle" in 1968, not at Ogden? So the picture is a pure CoSF, not a CoLA/City of Everywhere.

zephyr18 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Weren't they doing the "Cheyenne Shuffle" in 1968,
> not at Ogden? So the picture is a pure CoSF, not
> a CoLA/City of Everywhere.

Correctly speaking, its the COSTL and COSF. The shuffle of all the UP trains was done in Cheyenne at this date. Only dropping/adding the SP cars was done at Ogden.

I do recall the COSTL being announced, now that this has been discussed!

I shall, in the interest of not being wrong, amend the subject line... and thanks for all the input.

~ BZ

The City Of LA and City of St Louis were combined to/from Los Angeles, so if this train was a combined City of San Francisco and City of St Louis there would have had to be switching at Ogden. However, this train has only two sleeper, no dome, four char cars, which sounds like a pure City of San Francisco. During the summer, UP 103 and 104 usually operated in two section into and out of LA.

Something that may or may not be a factor here... my family deliberately picked July 20, 1968 as our departure, since that day was (as I recall) the effective date of a last departure for SP 102, provided the California PUC approved the discontinuance petition.

They didn't, and life went on. But that may have had something to do with service.

The consist out of Martinez that I listed above had changed significantly from the previous year's SP 101-102. The "shorts" car (Oakland-Odgen) used to be carried just behind a working Baggage-Postal car, the sleepers were carried on the rear, and there were more mail-and-express cars on the head end. 1967 was a year of great change when the Postal Service cut the mail contracts, and 1968 was the display of that. We also lost several trains to discontinuance that year, and many people were certain that the COSF would be among them. It was only two years before this photo that an airline strike saw COSF consists up to 23 cars long on the SP.

~ BZ

Notch16 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Something that may or may not be a factor here...
> my family deliberately picked July 20, 1968 as our
> departure, since that day was (as I recall) the
> effective date of a last departure for SP 102,
> provided the California PUC approved the
> discontinuance petition.
>
> They didn't, and life went on. But that may have
> had something to do with service.
>
> The consist out of Martinez that I listed above
> had changed significantly from the previous year's
> SP 101-102. The "shorts" car (Oakland-Odgen) used
> to be carried just behind a working Baggage-Postal
> car, the sleepers were carried on the rear, and
> there were more mail-and-express cars on the head
> end. 1967 was a year of great change when the
> Postal Service cut the mail contracts, and 1968
> was the display of that. We also lost several
> trains to discontinuance that year, and many
> people were certain that the COSF would be among
> them. It was only two years before this photo that
> an airline strike saw COSF consists up to 23 cars
> long on the SP.
>
> ~ BZ

And in late fall 1968, SP changed the position of the consist again, putting the sleepers on the rear, coaches ahead. It stayed like that until 1970, when they switched it back again. And in the fall, it went back to sleepers behind.

No wonder I go a little bonkers looking at old slides without consist lists!

~ BZ

There seems to be only a few references for these consists so it's an interesting topic for those brainiacs that we have out there.

There was a couple of one-off publications about the consists on a certain date, another about various Amtrak transition consists. There was an interesting issue of the Streamliner that highlighted the swaps, I think it was the Portland Rose issue but it drifted into the consist swaps along the way. Great stuff for insomniacs.