Can someone tell me the Daylight route for the SP? Its just one of those things i just dont know! I cant find it anywhere, Thanks, Bennett
The “Map of the Month” in the December 2004 issue of Trains shows them.
Do you mean the sunset route, or the routes of the particular daylight trains?
The primary Daylight route is also known as the Coast Line. This was the original Daylight route and is still served in Daylight hours by the Coast Starlight in each direction daily.The Shasta Daylight route is still served by the same Coast Starlights between Oakland and Portland. The only Daylight route that does not see Passenger service today is The San Joaquin Daylight as Amtrak California operates down the valley on the former AT&SF now BNSF route.
Thanks, one more thing, does anybody know if you could see Daylight trains in, around, through, or below LA? Like San Bernardino or San Diego? What was the farthest points it went (ex-LA-Portland) Thanks, Ben
I should refrase my question like this. If I wanted to see some GS-4 daylights or diesels when they ran, could i see them in Souther California (LA-San Bernardino, San Diego, Fullerton, Oceanside ect…) Did they run down hear? Thanks again, Ben
Not on the San Diego line (Fullerton,Oceanside) as that was AT&SF territory.
Espee/PE and UP never got any further south than Santa Ana/ Tustin to tap into the orange groves. SP got into San Diego thru the back door on the SD&IV connection to the east.
Daylight painted diesels could be found operating at the head of the following SP passenger trains Shasta daylight, Cascade, Coast Daylight, Lark, San Joaquin Daylight, Sunset, City of San Francisco, Sunbeam and Golden State. Daylight painted steam operated on the Daylight, Lark, San Joaquin Daylight, Arizona Limited and Sunset Limited.
Plus Hustler and Argonaut on the T&NO. Daylight PAs!
And don’t forget T&NO’s three beautiful streamlined Daylight P14 Pacifics 650-652 that held down the HOU-DAL Sunbeam and Hustler until being replaced by Daylight PAs. These locomotives also occasionally showed up on HOU-AUS and the HOU-Shreveport “Rabbit” after heavy maintenance, because T&NO mechanical forces preferred to break them in and road test them on trains that were not as hot as the non-stop high speed Sunbeam. Once they got going they could outrun the competing Sam Houston Zephyr and Twin Star Rocket’s E units.
Daylight GS’s showed up from time to time on pax trains all over the Pacific Lines (west of ELP). They didn’t get east of ELP on the T&NO portion of the Sunset Route because there was an engine change to T&NO power at ELP (T&NO operated as an autonomous company in conformance with TX law). That is, EXCEPT on early Sunbeam/Hustler advertisements, a situation that caused T&NO marketing people to develop ulcers fighting with uninformed San Francisco marketing types who should have known better.
AND—
SSW trains 1/2 and 5/6 until 1952 (generally STL- Pine Bluff) and then 7 & 8 between St Louis and Tyler TX ,eventually shortened to Texarkana in 1956 and then Pine Bluff in 1958 before service finally dropped in 1959. There is no evidence any of these units ever made it into DAL (the major city TX endpoint), which got black widow RS3’s with steam generators after dieselization.
SSW PA1s 300 & 301, FP7A 330/306 and GP7 (yes, that’s right–GP7–the only one an SP company ever owned!!) 320/304 wore a variant of the Daylight scheme, with silver roofs and SSW’s trademark yellow handrails. The two PAs went to the SP as 6067 and 6068 before being traded in to GE in 1963. The FP7A went bloody nose and was leased to the SP in 1960 as 6462 and then sold in 1970. The GP7 got repainted SSWs version of black widow, then bloody nose, and stayed with SSW until it was sold in 1972.
Best part of the Coast Line trip is where it traverses Vandenberg Aiur Force base and you can see where the Pacific Launch site for a space shuttle is from the train. It has never been used as all shuttle flights fly out of Florida. Just another fine example of Government waste. The train trip through the Base is unequalled as the Coast Highway doesn’t pass through the base. But I wonder how much that special Shuttle launch site cost the taxpayers and then they grumble about the cost of Amtrak.