The Sunset Limited - Amtrak Train #2
The Sunset Limited whisks you 1,995 miles from America’s Most Interesting City, New Orleans, through the bayous of Louisiana, the huge Heart of Texas, the storied West and beyond – to the home of the Hollywood Western, Los Angeles. While many transcontinental rail lines were forged from east to west, the Sunset had its beginnings in California. The link you are traveling was the second such route, completed in 1883. Eleven years later, its passengers could disembark in New Orleans and continue east by sea on railroad-owned passenger steamers. So sit back and enjoy sunlit marvels of color and unobstructed splendor, for just as a sunset is so much more than just an astronomical event, so too are the pictures painted in your window. The sun will eventually set on your trip, but the afterglow will last forever.
The Sunset Limited is the descendant of the former Southern Pacific Railway’s (SP) service dating to 1894. The “Limited” part of its name once differentiated trains that stopped at a “limited” number of stations along their routes from “local” trains that make every stop. Today, it is the oldest “named” train in continuous operation. The modern-day ”western lifestyle” magazine Sunset began in 1898 as a promotional magazine for the SP. That name traces its origins to a predecessor railroad, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway, known as the Sunset Route as early as 1874. At its SP inauguration and during several periods in its history, it was an all-Pullman train consisting of only sleeping cars (no coaches) and extending to San Francisco. Through the years, it went from steam power and wooden cars to steel heavyweight cars to dieselization and streamlining in the 1950s. Amtrak took over the train in 1971.
No comments:
Post a Comment