Passenger Trains > New England Comes to the Route of the Chiefs

A beautiful remnant of New York Central's Great Steel Fleet, sleeper observation "Babbling Brook" passes through La Plata, Missouri, bringing up the markers of Amtrak's Southwest Chief on Friday evening, August 1, 2014. Seldom, and perhaps never during the heyday of Santa Fe's Chiefs and the New York Central's postwar Great Steel Fleet did one of these stylish Brook-series 5-bedroom buffet observation lounge cars ever traverse Santa Fe rails.

No matter. For once again for a few brief minutes on a lovely summer evening do we catch a glimpse of past glories, as we are reminded when Santa Fe's great trains daily passed through this small north central Missouri town, often with a stylish end note like this. The moderne tailsign may say New England States, and the design may be New York Central's, but the style and spirit knows no geographic boundary, nor east or west.

And what of the boy, intently watching the photographer in the second image? Surely we understand. Any one of us would be right there at that window too, and for many, many miles would we intently watch the railroad and the summertime countryside roll past. In our own stylish theater, looking from our own window on the world. On a trip that we would pray would not soon end.

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/14 01:19 by ironmtn.

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Long personal favorites of mine from published photos, NYC's Brook-series cars ran on trains such as the New England States, Southwestern Limited and Ohio State Limited. It was a thrill to finally see one of these stylish cars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/14 07:49 by ironmtn.

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After a brief stop for just a few passengers on this Friday evening, Amtrak #3 heads westward with a tailsign probably unlike any to have graced these rails in bygone years. The station attendant turns to watch the markers recede around the curve, as it heads for Kansas City and points west. And who can blame him for a few seconds' view of such a sight?

Name but a one of us who would not do the same.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/14 01:15 by ironmtn.

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Thanks for sharing these images. Your sixth photo shows a classic passenger train scene. Very well done!

nice post, Mark

Thanks, all, for the kind comments and messages. Glad that you enjoyed the images.

I owe TO member auusiehinz thanks for the post noted below on 7/31 which beautifully showed the car passing "MH Tower" in Chicago; and TO member rombout137 for mentioning in that thread that the car would head west on the Southwest Chief on Friday 8/1. It was that thread and that comment which set up the opportunity to see the car at La Plata. Thanks to them both. Be sure you see the fine images from "MH Tower" in that thread:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3481410

And I also owe every Santa Fe fan an apology. For what conceivable reason I did not use the historic term, "The Chief Way", in the title and references to the historic ex-Santa Fe Chiefs and their way west is beyond me. Perhaps it was due to making the post in the wee hours on a sleepless night (yeah, right!). Or excitement perhaps at finally seeing an ex-NYC Brook-series car in the flesh (OK, maybe more credible, just a tiny bit). Who knows? I sure don't. The phrase "route of" was associated with promotion of other railroads' passenger services, but Santa Fe always favored its unique, "The Chief Way". In fact, I'm not sure that I have ever seen the phrase, "Route of..." associated with any Santa Fe passenger service in the Chiefs' golden years or later periods of life. I won't change the thread's title now, because I've learned in doing so in the past that it does not persist on the site, and then you have two titles for the same thread. So, I'll just take it on the chin from my many Santa Fe-fan friends.

I'm surprised that John Arbuckle (The Chief Way) and Lance Garrels (santafe199) have not already given me a good, swift kick. John even posted a nice comment. Okay you guys, Kansans as you both are, go ahead and say it: "Well, what would you expect from a Missourian?"

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/14 18:40 by ironmtn.

ironmtn Wrote:
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The phrase "route of" was
> associated with promotion of other railroads'
> passenger services, but Santa Fe always favored
> its unique, "The Chief Way". In fact, I'm not sure
> that I have ever seen the phrase, "Route of..."
> associated with any Santa Fe passenger service in
> the Chiefs' golden years or later periods of life.
>
>
> MC
> Columbia, Missouri

The thread of your title is not incorrect. Some Santa Fe boxcars and refrigerator cars were lettered "The Route of the Chief" or "Route of the San Francisco Chief."

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/230821.aspx (scroll to the 9th image)

http://railpixs.com/atsf/ATSF-boxcar-AmarilloTx-Oct94.jpg

Two memories: Back in 1951, my mother and grandmother took my brother and me back to New England to visit relatives. I remember riding in a New York Central observation car, but don't remember the name. I do remember the conductor showing how he could blow the horn from the back end of the train. We took the Lakeshore to New York City, stayed overnight there, then rode the New Haven to South Station. On the way back, we rode the New England States from Boston to Chicago. From LA to Chicago and back, we rode the Grand Canyon via Amarillo.

Moving forward to about 1967: I was working in East Pasadena CA, and my lunch time coincided with the Santa Fe Chief (#20) passing Chapman. I'd go to the tracks at least once a week, and remember seeing a New York Central sleeper on the rear of the train. I later learned that Santa Fe had a small fleet of steam-generator equipped Alco RS-1s and Fairbanks Morse diesels to move cars to other stations in Chicago--Santa Fe came into Dearborn Station, and NYC used LaSalle St. These transfer runs were apparently an answer to the complaint from the late 1940s that "A hog can cross the country without changing cars, but you can't."

And here are my daughters with a Santa Fe boxcar carrying an ad for the Chief.

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Whew! Thanks to you both for the information. I have previously seen a number of those different ad slogans on the sides of Santa Fe freight cars. But I had forgotten about the "Route of" slogan for The Chief. Glad to know that I will be OK with my Santa Fe-fan friends.

Thanks also for the memory of your trip on the NYC and Santa Fe. NYC indeed did have through sleepers to the Santa Fe at Chicago. The service started with the Chief on the Santa Fe and UP's Los Angeles Limited, and later expanded to other trains. Here's a link to a very interesting article from the Central's employee magazine, "The Headlight", about the inauguration of the service in April, 1946.

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/headlight/images/headlight-0446.pdf

This site, canadasouthern.com/caso is an excellent resource for NYC history in general, and not just NYC's Canada Southern. There are many NYC public timetables which have been scanned and are available as PDF's. Unlike some other sites, the scans are of all pages, not just the covers, so the timetable detail is available for research. You should be able to find an NYC timetable there for a date near that of the 1951 trip you described, and your 1967 recollection of seeing an NYC sleeper on The Chief. I will comment that the 1967 date seems late for such a service, just four years before Amtrak. I looked at one 1967 public TT (April 30, 1967) from the site, and did not see any mention of through sleeper service. You may have seen that NYC sleeper on The Chief very near to the end of such service, a lucky sighting indeed. You may also note that the covers of some of these public TT's depict Brook-series cars in the cover art. The Central was obviously proud of those cars.

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/timetables.htm

One document on this site is a standout. It is an NYC internal document showing 1954 sleeping car assignments by line. It is particularly valuable since it lists car names, again unlike some other available resources which just list car types. Through cars are listed for some lines under a "Joint Line" heading. Indeed, the very first page of the document shows such services, including a listing under Joint Line 4030 for Santa Fe's Regal-series sleepers for the Super Chief, and the Century and Commodore Vanderbilt on NYC.

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/images/1954-CAR-ASSIGNMENT.pdf

Although NYC's Southwestern Limited was a very fine train, and generally considered along with the Commodore Vanderbilt to be just a notch below the Century, the Central did not have such through-sleeper service at St. Louis so far as I know. Brook-series cars however regularly operated on the Southwestern. PRR and B&O did however have through sleepers connecting at St. Louis for Texas.

I very much doubt that any of the through sleepers was ever one of the Brook-series observations. So, I was deliberately open-ended in my original post. Especially here on TO, "never say never" is a good rule of thumb. It is remarkable with the pool of knowledge on this site the way in which people can come up with some fact, exception, or one-time event to belie the word "never". And that's all to the good.

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/14 10:42 by ironmtn.

Saw it last night here in Flagstaff!

ironmtn Wrote:
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> Although NYC's Southwestern Limited was a very
> fine train, and generally considered along with
> the Commodore Vanderbilt to be just a notch below
> the Century, the Central did not have such
> through-sleeper service at St. Louis so far as I
> know. Brook-series cars however regularly operated
> on the Southwestern. PRR and B&O did however have
> through sleepers connecting at St. Louis for
> Texas.

Update, even though it's well after the original date of the thread. These threads do get used for research even well after the date, so an update or correction can be worthwhile.

It turns out that there indeed was through sleeper service to/from Texas via NYC, Missouri Pacific, and the Frisco and Katy in the postwar period. I had thought so when I made the original post, but could not find the documentary evidence at that time. The new evidence is in a photo on page 392 of Lucius Beebe's "The Trains We Rode". That's the page number for the combined single volume reprint edition of the Beebe classic that I have; the page number (in the NYC section of the title) may be different in the original two volume edition. The image depicts the trainboard at Track 28 at Grand Central in New York City for the Southwestern Limited "Texas-Oklahoma Section", departing at 7:30 pm.

Listed are coaches, five NYC Pullmans, a lounge, a diner, three MP Pullmans, and the observation car.

Destinations listed on the trainboard were both on the Frisco, Katy, and MoPac, and also on NdeM in Mexico: Tulsa and Oklahoma City (SLSF), Muskogee (MKT), Texarkana (MP), Dallas (MKT & MP/T&P), Fort Worth (T&P/MP), Waco (MKT), Austin (MP & MKT), San Antonio (MP & MKT), Houston (MP & MKT), Galveston (MP), Laredo (MP), Monterrey (NdeM), San Luis Potosi (NdeM) and Mexico City (NdeM).

The car routing patterns are not indicated on the trainboard, and Beebe's caption doesn't say either: "To meet the competition of the rival Pennsylvania which, in the postwar floodtide of passenger business placed on the New York-St. Louis run an entire train designated as the Sunshine Special and which connected in the late afternoon at The Gateway with the Missouri Pacific's Texas-bound run of that name, the Central countered with a Texas-Oklahoma section of the Southwestern. Sleepers continued through to the impressive list of destinations on the trainboard shown here, and the equipment, such as the lounge interior depicted below included hand-me-down de luxe streamlined cars that had originally been assigned to No. 25 and 26 [the 20th Century Limited]."

Impressive is right. Probably some cars went out from St. Louis on the Frisco-MKT Texas Special for Frisco and Katy points, and others were switched into MP's Texas Eagle, which in the postwar period was becoming the MP's top scheduled service, taking over two of the Sunshine Special's three daily scheduled sections. The Texas Eagle split at Texarkana for north and west Texas points (Longview, Dallas-Ft. Worth and out to El Paso via MP subsidiary T&P) in one section; and central and south Texas and Mexico points in the other section. That second section in turn split again at Palestine for Houston, and Laredo and on into Mexico.

The car(s) to Mexico are the most intriguing. This reflects the MP's famous Aztec Eagle through sleeper service on from Laredo to Mexico City in conjunction with NdeM, a service which continued off and on in various forms into the mid-1960's.

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/14 21:29 by ironmtn.