City of San Francisco (train)
City of San Francisco was a luxury night train between Oakland on the Bay of San Francisco and Chicago operated from 1936 to 1971 by the Union Pacific (UP) in cooperation with Southern Pacific and Chicago & North Western (C&NW, from 1955 with Milwaukee Road ) . It was also the first streamlined train connection over the historically first transcontinental railroad in North America. The westbound train had the no. 101, train no. 102 drove east.
Beginning
One month after the " City of Los Angeles " began operating on its own Union Pacific route to southern California , the M-10004, the fourth Union Pacific streamlined train called the "City of San Francisco" , started on June 14, 1936 “Launched the transcontinental night train service and cut travel time to northern California to 39 hours and 45 minutes.
Since the UP did not have its own routes east of Omaha , the train to and from Chicago was operated in cooperation with the C&NW. West of Ogden , the Southern Pacific (SP) was responsible for operations across Donner Pass to Oakland Pier, where there was a ferry connection to San Francisco. As with the “ City of Portland ” and the “City of Los Angeles”, which were added in 1935, the “City of San Francisco” only allowed five vehicle rotations per month, as only one train set was available.
vehicles
In December 1937 the lead UP procured two three-part EMC E2 diesel locomotives for the “City of San Francisco” and “City of Los Angeles” . One of the two triple locomotives SF-1 to SF-3, known as the “Bulldogg” design because of their distinctive front end, carried a new 791-tonne 14-car train. The previous M-10004 multiple unit operated for the last time on January 2, 1938 as the "City of San Francisco" in order, after modifications, to condense the timetable of the more popular "City of Los Angeles" to ten monthly journeys in each direction. On the more northerly route to Oakland, however, the “City of San Francisco” continued to make five trips per month in each direction.
Later offer
With the introduction of the EMD E6 designated as SF-4 to SF-6 and a further set of wagons, the timetable could be condensed in July 1941 to ten train runs per month. From September 1947, the train ran daily between Chicago and Oakland. It was not until 1949 that serious competition arose with the “ California Zephyr ” operated jointly by the Burlington Route , the Denver & Rio Grande Western and the Western Pacific .
In late October 1955, traffic east of Omaha passed from C&NW to Milwaukee Road. In 1960, "City of San Francisco" and "City of Los Angeles" were run between Ogden and Chicago in a joint train set.
After the transfer of passenger train traffic to Amtrak on May 1, 1971, the new operator only had a passenger train with the previous name "City of San Francisco" in its timetable until 1972.
Incidents
On August 12, 1939, the "City of San Francisco" derailed on the section of the Southern Pacific after its stop in Carlin , shortly after it had passed the Harney plant . The cause was officially an act of sabotage. The accident investigation, however, was so opaque that it is still controversial today.
On November 12, 1951, two eastbound trains, a City of San Francisco and a City of Los Angeles, collided in a snow storm near Evanston , Wyoming . 26 people died and 200 were injured.
In January 1952, the "City of San Francisco" made international headlines again when train 101 got stuck for six days in a snow storm in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada ( Spanish: "snowy mountain range"). Heavy snowdrifts 3.6 m high blocked the exposed slope of the Southern Pacific stretch at Donner Pass from January 13th to 19th, 1952. Despite a large-scale rescue operation in which two helpers were killed, the 196 passengers and 20 train crew members could only be evacuated after 72 hours.
literature
- G. Freeman Allen: The fastest trains in the world - the fast traffic in the past, present and future . franck, 1980, ISBN 3-440-04856-X .
- W. David Randall, William G. Anderson: The Official Pullman-Standard Library - Vol. 13 Union Pacific 1933-1937 . RPC Publications Inc., 1993
Individual evidence
- ^ Peter WB Semmens: Catastrophes on rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 147.
- ^ "The Case of the Stranded Streamliner" Trains & Travel "Vol 13, January, 1953