Who came up with all the names of the North American trains? I know that Amtrak inherited a lot of names from the freight railroad companies pre-1971, and I also know that e.g. the Missouri River Runner’s name was the result of a competition. And that the Southwest Chief was a result of merging the names Southwest Limited and Super Chief. I’m interested in the history of all those romantic names. Has this disappeared in the mists of Time or do we actually know where all these names came from, as well as when in the history of the railroads? It would be nice to have a comprehensive thread where the origin and history of the names is being discussed.
Well, I think that a productive way to approach that is for us to chime in on the individual trains/railroads which we do know some details about. So, as to the
Chiefs....
Background: We complain about Amtrak's leisurely scheduling today, but a hundred years ago the trip often took
twice as long. I've got an
Official Guide (scanned electronic copy, paper originals are very rare from this period) from March 1916; it shows that on the run-of-the-mill trains such as the
Navajo and the
Scout (the early
Scout; in the Depression years the name would be re-purposed for an economy coach travelers' train) which offered sleeping and chair car (coach) service the trip took four full days! On the
Scout you would depart Chicago at 10:30 in the evening on a Sunday, and be scheduled to arrive into Los Angeles at 8:45 a.m. Thursday...that's 84 and a quarter hours! The
Navajo was even worse; you left Chicago more than 12 hours earlier at 9:50 on Sunday morning but only arrived Los Angeles less than two hours before the evening
Scout did, at 7:10 a.m....a 95 hour schedule!
Of course, if your time was valued at a premium there was an alternative. The
California Limited was Santa Fe's premium daily offering; all-Pullman sleeper passengers only and a dining car all the way (the two trains above stopped for meals at Harvey Houses west of Kansas City). That train would leave Chicago each day at 8:05 p.m. and be scheduled to arrive into Los Angeles at 2:40 p.m. three days later for a 68-1/2 hour schedule which was competitive with the best that Union Pacific could offer (the
Los Angeles Limited). Santa Fe, which had held a practical monopoly on traffic between Chicago and southern California until the UP-controlled Los Angeles & Salt Lake began operations in 1905, wanted to take a step to assert dominance in the market. So, in 1911 they created the
Santa Fe De Luxe...a super-premium winter season only train between Chicago and California which featured perhaps the very first "air conditioned" (using an ice bunker and circulating water) dining car. It ran only once a week on what was for that time a blazing 63 hour schedule, and it charged a princely $25 extra fare...at that time, almost as much as an average working man could expect to make in a month.
The
De Luxe was well received by its target clientele, but with the United States' entry into World War One it was deemed an unnecessary luxury and withdrawn. For a number of years the U.S. railroads were controlled by the U.S. government via the USRA, but when it was finally dismantled and the capitalists were fully in control and the Roaring Twenties began to really roar, Santa Fe looked to revisit and build upon its earlier success. By this time (in 1926) Santa Fe had installed automatic block signalling on most of its transcontinental main line and locomotive technology had advanced a full generation. They began planning a new, daily version of the old
De Luxe which would operate on the same 63 hour schedule...still a full five hours faster than the still-premium all-Pullman
California Limited and its 1926 competitors. Union Pacific and Southern Pacific apparently got wind of the effort at the same time; I still don't know for sure who was first but I do know that an upgraded CNW-UP
Los Angeles Limited as well as a RI-SP
Golden State Limited were inaugurated with exactly the same 63 hour schedule as the new Santa Fe train on exactly the same date: November 14th, 1926.
But Santa Fe did not choose to restore the
"De Luxe" moniker. At the turn of the 20th century Santa Fe was suffering a bit of an identity crisis; affecting an effete French character in some areas (19th century advertising shows the road as the "Santa Fe Route", as well as the aforementioned
De Luxe train name) while honoring its route through the southwest in others. By the mid-1920s the road had made the decision to fully embrace its southwestern heritage, dropping the old "Santa Fe Route" badging entirely while adopting the famous "circle and cross" logo. In keeping with this decision, the new 63 hour extra fare (but only $10 in this incarnation) train would be named the
Chief.
The new
Chief was an immediate success. Incremental improvements were made in running time throughout the next decade, but it was with the introduction of Diesel technology and streamlining that a generational change was made possible. Union Pacific, flush with success with its M-10000 series streamliners, began planning the train which would become the new Diesel-powered
City of Los Angeles. Santa Fe was almost caught flat-footed. Almost. They had a boxy, proto-EMD twin-unit Diesel locomotive set on order which would be called "Amos & Andy" and they went to the Budd company to place an order for what would become possibly the single finest trainset ever constructed for delivery in 1937. But 1937 was still a year away and the UP's new streamliner was heading into service right now, so Santa Fe rounded up the finest heavyweight Pullman equipment it could find and placed it in service behind Amos & Andy between Los Angeles and Chicago once a week (Edit To Add: On a 39-3/4 hour schedule) as the
Super Chief until the new Budd equipment which more rightly suited the moniker could be delivered.
When the
Super Chief entered service as, originally, a weekly and then twice-weekly train, the daily
Chief continued in operation. The public response to the new streamlined equipment was so overwhelmingly favorable that Santa Fe soon re-equipped the original
Chief with similar equipment as well. Then, after World War II, they expanded the name into a franchise. The
Texas Chief began operations between Chicago and Galveston via Kansas City, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth and Houston in 1948, and the
San Francisco Chief was placed in service via Topeka, Waynoka, Belen and Barstow in 1954. There was also a
Kansas City Chief for a while, but it was not nearly as successful as the transcontinental flagships.
When Santa Fe joined Amtrak after much soul-searching in 1971, they alone among the major passenger carriers reserved the right to withdraw the use of their trademarked train names if Amtrak did not meet their standards of service. And Amtrak did not, and so in the mid-70s the Santa Fe forced them to change the name of the former
Super Chief/El Capitan to the
Southwest Limited and that of the
Texas Chief to the
Lone Star. The
Lone Star was lost during the 1979 Carter cuts (regrettably), but Amtrak lobbied Santa Fe repeatedly for the return of the
Chief trademark for trains 3 & 4. With the arrival of Superliner equipment, better food service, and on-board movies and other amenities Santa Fe agreed to allow them to rename the train as the
Southwest Chief...by which it is still known today.