The Beginning

The Coast Line Route

1. The area in between the coastal lands of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties was called the “gap”. SLO - S.B. is the “stormy end”
   

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3. There is a 2.2% grade SLO West to S.F.
   

Construction

1. The Southern Pacific Railroad was incorporated Dec. 2, 1865 under laws of California to build a rail line from San Francisco south to Los Angeles, San Diego and eventually to the Mississippi River. Track was completely laid to Stenner Creek by April 6. 1894. The first train reached San Luis Obispo, May 5, 1894 at 3:25 P.M.
   

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3. The bridge over Santa Ynez River was completed early, 1897, and another stop was added to the S.P. schedule at “Surf”.
   

4. The last rail and spike was laid on the Cementario Canyon Bridge, 1 mile east of Gaviota, on Dec. 30, 1900. The “gap” was finally closed. It took 36 years to do it. The Coast Line officially opened March 31, 1901. The first train connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles through SLO was run Sunday, April 1, 1901.
   

1. Most of Coast Line was operated by traditional train order until institution of Direct Traffic Control in 1985. There were short stretches of CTC including over the Cuesta Grade. The first coast installation of welded rail was 1956, near Chualar.
   

1. The Coast Line was called, “The Route of the Missions”.
   

S. P. and World War II

1. During the war years, the Southern Pacific was the strategic segment of the transcontinental supply line. The prime objective of wartime transportation in 1942 was to get maximum tonnage over the line with minimum of time, men and motive power.
   

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3. Since Pearl Harbor it had moved tremendous amounts of military equipment in extra and regular freight trains and hundreds of thousands of soldiers in more than a thousand special trains.The companies responsibility was made difficult by a variety of factors. The most important was the mushrooming industrial development at Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area. This consisted primarily of aircraft factories, aluminum and magnesium plants, steel mills, shipyards and new mining operations. Just two years before, none of these had been in existence. A second major hurdle for S.P. to overcome was the increase of traffic resulting format a shortage of ships. Generally, the railroad faced heavy water competition from both the Pacific Coast wise and Panama Canal shipping. By 1942, virtually all coast wise commercial shipping had disappeared, allowing S.P. to pickup and carry the oil, gasoline and pulp. Lumber, Paper and canned goods moved east over the transcontinental rail.
   

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5. Yet another factor making the companies responsibilities more intensified during 1942 was the huge military and naval program developing all along the west and gulf coasts. That program consisted of camps, airfields, forts, cantonments, arsenals, embarkation ports and supply line bases.
   

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7. During WWII, most carriers would agree that the burden fell more noticeably on Southern Pacific in 1942 than upon any other railroad company. It was a 2 billion dollar company employing 86,000. In mid-1942 it already was doing 136% more business than all of 1939. $150 million dollars was put back into the company during this time.
   

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9. During 1942, S.P. had 15,600 miles of track sprawled across western America. The companies founders believed in the Jim Hill’s precepts to refrain from double tracking to any extent and build alternate main lines into new territory.
   

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11. In the early months of WWII, the company had to borrow or lease 24 engines form other railroads. In need of equipment, “the companies motive power department had rehabilitated everything that looked and acted like a locomotive including teapots more than 50 years old”, commented Fortune. Roundhouses were on a full three-shift basis for repairs, and the shop force was swollen 43%, was on a 48-hour week. Since Aug. 1, 1939, the S.P. has ordered locomotives and cars worth $82 million, roughly equal to the total net income from 1939 to 1941. Included in this figure are 252 locomotives worth nearly $40 million.
    

TimeLine

Historical Moments

1. Teddy Roosevelt visited Surf in 1903.
   

2. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 affected the S.P.
   

3. On Sep. 8, 1923, 7 Navy ships went a ground at Canada Honda Trestle. Train #17, the Seashore Express, rescued the survivors.  
   

4.    Known as the “The Tragedy at Honda”.
   

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6. F.D.R. toured the Coast Line        (*see Bulletin 8/1928, pg. 8-9)
   

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8. In the 20’s through the 50’s, with the development of the William Randolph Hearst famed estate at San Simeon, countless Hollywood celebrities arrived via the S.P. to San Luis Obispo an then were chauffeured to the “ranch” via shiny black Buick and Cadillac limousines.
   

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10. Daylight train inaugurated March 21, 1937 with Olivia de Havilland, broadcast on NBC.
    

11. The radio show “All Aboard” 1/2 hr aired weekly in 1940-41 on NBC from Hollywood studios.
    

12. Musical romances were performed on “The Railroad Hour” NBC every Monday night.
    

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14. In March 1938, torrential rains hit the Sierra’s and the U.P. “City of LA” was rerouted to San Francisco via Los Angeles on the Coast Line.
    

World War II

1. In Oct., 1940, two 14” rail mounted coastal defense guns fired out to sea at the Naples spur.
   

2. S.P. moved Japanese-Americans to interment camps during WWII.
   

3. A Japanese submarine fired shots at Ellwood Oil Field on Feb. 23, 1942.
   

4. During the war, the Coast Line was called “the Burma road of the West”.
   

Celebrities

1. Red Skelton used to entertain passengers in the lounge car, and the conductors and porters didn’t like that because the people would not go to sleep, this according to S.P. Conductor Clyde Davis.
   

2. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev rode the Coast Line and stopped in SLO on Sep. 20, 1957.
   

Tehachapi Earthquake

1. During the July 1952’s period, Tehachapi was down and out due to the earthquake rebuilding and they detoured the trains of two railroads on the Coast line. because of collapsed tunnels & slides. From July 21,1952 and for the next twenty six days before they could get anything moving over Tehachapi.
   

Merger

    D.R. & G.W. merged with the S.P. in 1988.

Last Year For Steam In So. Calif.

1. The Coast Daylight was finally dieselized in January 1955. The Coast Mail used steam intermittently into 1956. SP was still dispatching freights with cab-aheads as power in early 1955, but by late in the year they were gone. Steam switching hung on, especially in the Imperial Valley, until late summer 1956. The flood of new GP9s in 1956 forced the remaining steam back to Oakland-Tracy-Bakersfield-Roseville. If I wanted to say "mainline steam in all directions from Los Angeles" I would have to say no later than 1953-54.
   

2. Joe Strapac