List,
For those of you who are not members, the Burlington Route Historical Society
has just published a one-of-a-kind soft cover book on the Exposition Flyer, a
most fascinating train operated by the Q, the Rio Grande and the WP. For
those of you interested in western passenger trains, this is it! Bulletin
editor
Hol Wagner tells the tale of the Exposition Flyer in 264 pages with 42 pages
just on the equipment alone! I am including our press release with instructi
ons on how to order it if you are interested.
Rich Gortowski
President - BRHS
PRESS RELEASE
BURLINGTON ROUTE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Burlington Bulletin No. 42: The Exposition Flyer
The Exposition Flyer seems to be little remembered, though it was a pioneer
in the concept of through train service over multiple railroads west of
Chicago. It was inaugurated as a one-season-only way to serve the Golden Gate
International Exposition - the West Coast's World's Fair - in San Francisco,
but ran
for nearly 10 years. Its famous successor, the California Zephyr, became
"America's most talked about train" - a sleek, glamorous vision in stainless
steel, diesel-powered by locomotives of the three railroads over which it
operated, and regularly carrying more dome cars than any other train, anywhere.
But from June 10, 1939, to March 20, 1949, the CZ's progenitor, the
Exposition Flyer, ran in seeming anonymity of the rails of the Chicago,
Burlington &
Quincy, the Denver & Rio Grande Western/Denver & Salt Lake, and the Western
Pacific between Chicago Union Station and the Oakland Mole, Southern Pacific's
ferry terminal on San Francisco Bay. Made up of existing, primarily
heavyweight
passenger cars of its three sponsors and the Pullman Company and initially
powered by steam, the Expo was hodgepodge in appearance, with no two consists
exactly the same. A total of nine distinctly different types of
lounge-observation cars, for example, carried the Expo's markers over the
decade the train
ran. The Expo helped inaugurate coast-to-coast transcontinental sleeping car
service in 1946. The nation's first Vista Dome car was built with the Expo in
mind, and the California Zephyr dome chair cars operated on the Expo for nearly
a year before the CZ entered service.
Without a doubt, the Exposition Flyer is one of the least heralded passenger
trains ever operated by the Q, Grande or WP. While the CZ draws extensive
coverage, the Expo rates no mention at all in Rebel of the Rockies, Robert
Athearn's definitive history of the Rio Grande; only passing mention in Richard
Overton's similar CB&Q treatise, Burlington Route; and again, virtually no
mention
in the only published history of the WP, penned by Gilbert Kniess for the
March 1953 50th anniversary issue of Mileposts, the railroad's house organ.
Yet the Expo is one of the most interesting trains operated by any of these
three roads, and its story deserves telling. This issue of the BURLINGTON
BULLETIN attempts to do just that, in 264 pages of text, photographs, drawings
and
momentoes of the landmark train.
Available from:
BRHS
P.O. Box 456 Dept. BRL
LaGrange, IL 60525
The cost is $35.00 plus $5.00 S&H
Illinois residents add $3.10 sales tax per book
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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