Route
The heart of Santa Fe’s marketing advantage for the Super Chief lay in the geography of the route as well as its ownership. The Santa Fe had originally begun as the constructing of a rail line traversing the old Santa Fe and Spanish Trails, from the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers (at Atchison and Topeka, KS) to the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers in New Mexico. This initial route was eventually extended to Los Angeles.
The convenience of traveling “Santa Fe All The Way”, was superior to anything that the competing jointly operated railroads could provide on their routes to the west coast. A single traffic and operating department ruled all the divisions and districts of the Santa Fe route from Chicago to Los Angeles. Dining cars, the commissary supply chains, the on-board service crews and their management; all worked as a single unit (as they were working for a single company) from the moment a passenger boarded the train in Chicago until they alighted in Los Angeles.
The original Super Chief route ran from Chicago through Kansas City, Missouri; Newton, Kansas; Dodge City, Kansas; La Junta, Colorado; Raton, New Mexico; Las Vegas, New Mexico; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Gallup, New Mexico; Winslow, Arizona; Seligman, Arizona; Needles, California; Barstow, California; San Bernardino, California; and Pasadena, California, before terminating at Los Angeles. During the pre-war years the Super Chief did not allow passengers to board or disembark at any point between Kansas City and Barstow; all intermediate stops were operating stops only, to change crews and/or to service the train. During the war years the rules were relaxed to carry passengers to and from the intermediate points of Albuquerque and La Junta, but only when unsold space was available at train time. It was not until the postwar era that passengers could freely travel to intermediate station stops on the Super Chief.
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Famous quotes containing the word route:
“A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)