The Coast Starlight
It is fitting that one of the great train rides in America—from Los Angeles to San Francisco—departs from one of the truly magnificent terminals. The train is the Coast Starlight; the terminal, Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
Only in the light of recent history is this also astonishing. The current trend is to cancel trains, to tear down wonderful old terminals. But this is a story that runs counter to the trend.
Opened in May of 1939, Union Station from the outside resembles just another big Spanish-style building. But inside, it is a shrine to the golden days of rail travel. The cathedral of a main waiting room has 40-foot-high arched windows, glittering chandeliers, each constructed from 2,000 pounds of brass, aluminum, steel and glass, and a floor resembling a rich Moroccan rug woven in marble and embodying the colors of the earth.
Walking around beneath the massive ceiling, one can imagine what it must have been like in the years following World War II, when most of the people traveling to and from Los Angeles rode one of the 48 trains listed on the terminal’s board. Today, that number is down to 20. The waiting room’s leather and wood settees—each a single unit seating four persons in complete comfort, two abreast, back to back—still run the length of the corridor, but the wood is a little scuffed and the leather has been replaced by plastic. The mahogany ticket booths are there, but the cast-brass nameplates of the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific, Santa Fe are gone. And in the telephone room, while the finely crafted wood-and-glass booths remain, no operator is in residence to place each call, direct the caller to the proper booth, then collect the money when the caller is finished.
One of the terminal’s services has actually improved since the glory days. The gift shop, once a conventional newsstand, has become a mecca for train buffs. In addition to candy and magazines, it now sells all kinds of train buttons, watch fobs, tie clips, belt buckles, and over 1,000 different Vanishing Vista cards, wonderful, over-sized train postcards costing 60 cents each. But the star of the shop is its collection of patches, representing, according to the manager, Sean McCarthy, ‘’every logo of every train that ever ran in America.’’ Mr. McCarthy, who took over the shop for his family in 1978 and initiated the transformation, carries all 483 patches, selling them at $1.25 each. Prominent among them is the patch for the Coast Starlight.
The Starlight, in fact, is a reincarnated version of the old Coast Daylight of Southern Pacific fame. It was introduced by Amtrak in 1971 with thrice-weekly service to Seattle. Now it runs daily, the full trip covering 1,432 miles.
To board the train, one proceeds through the cavernous subway leading under the station. The train is listed as ‘’All Reserved,’’ but that means a guaranteed seat—not a specific seat.
The Coast Starlight is what dedicated rail travelers would call a serious train, with eight big bilevel cars headed by two power units, more than 15 feet high and generating 6,000 horsepower. Looking at the immense diesel locomotives, one is almost overcome by their palpable strength.
When it comes time to board the train, the Amtrak officer directs the San Francisco passengers to the forward part of the train, leaving them three chances for a good seat between the observation car and the overflow car, which they try to keep empty. Space is usually available on the lower level of the first car, but on such a scenic trip the preferred seating is upstairs.
That first car is a superliner, with 14 seats below and room for lavatories and baggage, and 62 well-spaced seats above. Passengers sitting on the left side have a view of the Pacific—so that side fills up fast. The second car is a coach/baggage car, with 76 lessroomy seats above and only baggage below. The third car is another superliner. The seats are wide and clean and well padded, with the deepest possible tilt and with their own leg rests. Pushed all the way back, they are the closest things to beds on the train except for the actual bedrooms, which are in the two sleeper cars at the rear and cost extra.
As the train leaves the city, it follows the concrete bed of the Los Angeles River, passing in the first half hour a maze of freeways and built-up suburbs, among them Burbank and Van Nuys, and then going through a long series of tunnels. Finally, it arrives in the open countryside, with broad, open valleys stretching between green hills.
A pamphlet entitled ‘’From Your Window ...’’ enables passengers to identify sites along the way. Featured in the 28 pages are drawings and notes and such tidbits as the fact that the big factory passed in Burbank is Lockheed and the one in Van Nuys, General Motors. The mountains that the train cuts through, the booklet notes, are the the Santa Susanas separating Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Sketches of the towns along the way are included, some going back as far as the Spanish explorers. The pamphlet is truly a bargain for $2.25.
Strolling through the cars, one is impressed by the variety of the passengers -older couples, mothers stretched out on the flattened seats beside their sleeping children, businessmen reading and others walking around for exercise. In the glass-domed observation car, with its plush seats all facing sideways, strangers talk to each other as if they had been friends for years.
Down below in the snack bar, as the line forms for drinks and pizza and microwave popcorn that, miraculously, pops inside its own sealed bag, old men play pinochle at one table and children play ‘’go fish’’ at another.
Just past Ventura the train crosses under U.S. 1, and begins its 113-mile stretch run along the Pacific. This is the highlight of the trip, and the passengers generally settle back in their seats to enjoy the passing panorama. Along the route are little clusters of rocker oil wells, fitting reminders that California’s oil industry began in this area, and offshore are giant drilling platforms, more than a dozen of them. An occasional surfer can be seen riding the graceful waves. The little pamphlet notes that a popular nudist beach lies below Santa Barbara, but nary a sign of bare skin can be seen from the train.
When the Coast Starlight stops at Santa Barbara, the conductor points out a magnificent tree outside the window on the right side of the train. This is the famous Moreton Bay Fig Tree, which was carried from Australia by a sailor in 1877, and is now the biggest fig tree in North America, with a spread of 160 feet. Also visible from the train, just to the north, are the Ellwood Oil Fields, shelled by a Japanese submarine on Feb. 23, 1942.
Sometime after 1 P.M. the last call is sounded for lunch in the dining car. We are more than two hours from San Luis Obispo, our next stop, so there is plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely lunch at a window overlooking the Pacific as the train eases past the Point Concepcion lighthouse and heads north for San Francisco.
The table setting is neat but disappointing. The cloth is paper, the utensils plastic and, upon not-too-close examination, the pretty little rose turns out to be made of fabric. Under ‘’Mid-Day Fare’’ on the menu mostly soup and sandwiches are listed. Some passengers plan ahead and bring along a box lunch and a bottle of wine. Actually, the chicken sandwich, topped with ham and Swiss cheese and served with soup—for $3.25—and a $2 pony of Almaden red burgundy is quite satisfactory.
Sigbjorm Askvik, the head service attendant in the car and an eight-year veteran of the railroad, bemoans the appearance of the dining car.
‘’Plastic and paper,’’ he says, looking at the table. ‘’The cuts, you know. You should have been here a year ago. New china. Nice silver, real carnations on every table and linen cloths. A full menu, prepared fresh on board. Then suddenly, in September of 1981, they took it all back.’’
(Nov. 1 marked a return of at least part of that serice. Silver flatware replaced the plastic, and hamburgers are freshly made instead of microwaved into life.)
After lunch, a group of passengers assemble on the observation car. Most are first-time riders, people who would normally take the hourlong plane ride but opted instead for the 10 hours of scenery and socializing. ‘’Slow but wonderful,’’ was their unanimous judgment of the 466-mile trip.
Many passengers take the train for financial reasons. The economy one-way fare from Los Angeles to San Francisco is about the same—$52 by rail; $39 to $118 by air—but longer trips show a greater difference. Typical of these is Sally Ann Kuyper’s journey, returning with her two young children from a visit to her mother in Austin, Tex., and heading home to Albany, Ore., spending three nights and two-and-a-half days on trains.
‘’The children find other kids to play with, and they do just fine,’’ says Mrs. Kuyper, who teaches school in Oregon. ‘’I figured it costs me $250 less each way by train.’’
For some travelers, it is a pure love of trains that provides the impetus, an appreciation of that perception of movement so lacking when you’re strapped in at one airport, fed and then unstrapped a thousand miles later. One senses this as the Coast Starlight slips quietly past the missile launching pads of Vandenberg Air Force Base, between the adobe houses of San Luis Obispo, and so close to the state prison just beyond that the inmates can be seen playing baseball.
Later, with the sun setting on the vineyards around San Jose, the train pulls into the Oakland 16th Street Station, where a bus is waiting for the last leg of the trip, over the bridge.
Then comes the closing sight of the day—and probably the most spectacular. In the distance is San Francisco, its bridges and buildings all lit up, a glowing city on the Bay. If you go There are four trains daily from Los Angeles to San Francisco—or, more accurately, to Oakland, across the Bay. The Coast Starlight leaves Union Station in Los Angeles every morning at 10:15, arriving at Oakland’s 16th Street Station at 8:25 P.M. The Spirit of California leaves at 8:45 P.M., reaching Oakland at 7:20 A.M. Two San Joaquins leave Los Angeles (via bus connection to Bakersfield). The first departs at 3:55 A.M., arriving in Oakland at 12:35 P.M., and the second at 1:25 P.M., arriving at 10:05 P.M. Heading north, the Coast Starlight leaves Oakland every night at 8:50, arriving in Seattle the next night at 6:30. S.R.