Pacific station, looking like a big wedding cake, as the cab screeched
to a stop inches behind another taxi at the station entrance.
Inside the station I checked the track numbers for the Daylight to
Los Angeles. Some movie starlet was taking the Daylight, and she
was posing for news photographers in the train concourse as the
gate attendant checked my ticket and passed me through.
I looked for my car number as I walked down the platform
alongside the shiny scarlet and orange streamliner referred to as
the most beautiful train in the world.
Over the years I’ve had model passenger cars that were painted in
Daylight colors, but now there are accurate ready-to-run replicas
of the actual Daylight trains available in both HO and N scales.
In 1937, the first Southern Pacific streamlined Daylight trains
began operation on the Coast Line, providing fast dawn to dusk
service between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
With the success of the new Daylight, the railroad started up
more streamliners, eventually assigning the new-type trains
to every important passenger route on their system. These
trains had several interesting operations that can be simu-
lated on model railroads, and I have described a few of them
in this monograph. Due in great part to the publications of the
Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society I had a veri-
table tidal wave of information, and I recommend membership
Model Railroad Hobbyist | January 2015 | #59
PART 1 – SP PASSENGER TRAINS |
4
in this group
that is preserving so much about
trains and railroad operation.
In keeping each installment in this series to a readable size, I
hope I haven’t omitted anyone’s favorite SP train, operation, or
type of car. I’m working on additional material all the time, so
what you see here is a work in progress.
What started as a single article has grown to be a multi-part
series. This first article has the background of the Morning
and Noon Daylight trains and the accompanying streamlined
Sunbeam. The next article will document other SP streamliners.
The remaining parts of this series will have suggestions for
modeling the cars needed to make up these trains. As I wrote
1. Key for train consist diagrams.
