The other car ..

I mentioned in my introduction that there would be a second car in our consist, the Silver Rapids, and that wasn’t just another 10-6 sleeper. I want to explain why is was special but first I need to give a little history of the California Zephyr. It was operated by a combine of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Denver & Rio Grande Western and the Western Pacific Railroads. Unlike the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and the Union Pacific (don’t the railroads love grand sounding names) none of the CZ guys owned track that ran from Chicago to the West Coast.  So they teamed up for a relay operation of a single train that would get you there without changing.  They called it the California Zephyr. Besides sharing the operation of the train, they shared the rolling stock.  Each railroad provided their own locomotives for movement over their portion of the route.  In addition each railroad contributed a proportionate number of the passenger cars. The Silver Solarium for instance was owned by the CB&Q. The Silver Rapids was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad.  Wait! What? How did those guys get involved?  America’s railroad system was and is pretty much divided up by East and West. Despite the well known Transcontinental Railroad name, there was no company that owned track coast to coast.  Mostly you could count on the Mississippi River to be the dividing line. Take a train to Chicago or St. Louis or New Orleans, get off and take another train on a different railroad to LA or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle. But the CZ folks had a better idea.  What if you could board a sleeper in New York City and just stay on while it was switched to a train in Chicago and then go all the way to San Francisco*. This was where the Silver Rapids came in. It was built by the Budd Rail Car company to be identical to the CZ 10-6 sleepers but owned by the PRR.  It only ran one round trip a week and actually alternated between PRR and the New York Central trains. But it was still a one seat (or bed) ride from coast to coast.  There were other railroads that combined for similar operations, I’m not familiar with all of them, but never the less the Silver Rapids was a rare opportunity for a seamless trip. And it was one of the few passenger cars that regularly traveled completely across the country, making it pretty special.

* In the name of full disclosure it should be noted that the California Zephyr only ever went to San Francisco one time, for a ceremonial inauguration. The normal route was to Oakland where passenger were transferred by bus to San Francisco.  The trip south and then north around San Francisco Bay just took too long.