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Jim Bradshaw: Is Amtrak ready to break up the Sunset Limited?

Amtrak is looking seriously at the idea of breaking up some of its traditional cross-country routes into shorter rides that would be attractive to more passengers. The planners say more riders would get aboard for, say, the stretch between Houston and New Orleans, if the trains ran more often and on more convenient schedules.
One of the problems with the current system of long-distance trains, they say, is that the timetables are based on people riding from one end of the route to the other. That means that trains like the Sunset Limited often run through big towns in the middle of the night, and often so far behind schedule it’s anybody’s guess when they will actually arrive.
Breaking the ride into shorter routes, Amtrak says, will allow more trains to run on more convenient routes and at more convenient times. They also say this is the time to make the change because many of the cars on the long-distance trains are old and need to be replaced. The new configuration would allow Amtrak to replace little-used sleeping cars and diners with ones better suited for shorter trips.
The plan seems to make sense, but it could mean the end to a storied train that has been traveling through south Louisiana for 125 years.
The Sunset Limited went into service on Nov. 25, 1894, when Southern Pacific officials steamed out of New Orleans aboard their fancy new entry into the elite passenger service.
The railroad had offered transcontinental service since 1883, but the Sunset Limited was designed to be faster and more comfortable than anything that had been offered before. At first, it was an all-Pullman train, made up only of sleeping cars and no coaches, running from New Orleans to San Francisco by way of Los Angeles.
The first four-car train pulled by a tiny steam locomotive made the trip from New Orleans to El Paso in 35 hours and 50 minutes. That was fast. It cut a full day off the trip between New Orleans and San Francisco.
The Limited made one trip each way each week. The westbound train left New Orleans on Thursday morning and arrived in San Francisco on Sunday morning. The train from San Francisco also left on Thursday and got to New Orleans on Sunday. Twice-weekly runs began on Oct. 31, 1895, daily service on Nov. 15, 1902.
In 1912, the Sunset Limited became the first train to provide electric lights. By then it had added a club car that included a barber shop, and a fancy dining car that served meals as good as anything offered in a fine restaurant. In 1936, at the beginning of its heyday, it became one of Southern Pacific’s first trains to be air conditioned. Big chunks of ice were loaded onto the roofs of the cars at stops along the route.
Airplanes and modern highways were beginning to eat into passenger service in August 1950, when Southern Pacific completely revamped the Sunset Limited. Each train had 15 cars, including a baggage-mail car, dormitory car, four chair cars, a coffee shop-lounge car, diner, full lounge with barber shop and six Pullmans that featured room service for compartments that converted into bedrooms.
The new trains took 42 hours for the 2,070-mile run from New Orleans to San Francisco. That was five hours less than the old eastbound schedule and 3½ hours off of the westbound run.
But the early 1950s were the last hurrah for passenger service generally and the Sunset Limited particularly. In the 1960s, Southern Pacific did away with the dining car, lounge car and sleeping cars.
By 1968, the one-time luxury train consisted of only three cars: a baggage car, a coach and a lunch-counter car served by vending machines.
In October 1970, the schedule between New Orleans and Los Angeles was cut from daily to only three times a week.
Amtrak took over in May 1971 but could not stop the decline in ridership. The once-proud train ran on rails owned by freight haulers and was regularly shuttled aside to let the box cars pass.
From early 1993 through August 2005, the Sunset Limited route was extended east of New Orleans to Jacksonville, Florida, making it for a time the only true transcontinental passenger train in American history. But Katrina tore up the tracks on the Gulf Coast, and that ended that.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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