Journey to Amtrak

Below photos are of the last trains that were run before Amtrak took over on May 1 1971.

Mike Devlin and I decided to try and ride, pace, and photograph each train that would be discontinued after April 30th in the Southern California area. First train was the San Joaquin Daylight. We took turns riding from Saugus to Tehachapi, switching at Lancaster. Mike had made a sign for the front of the engine, seen in the photos being installed in Tehachapi. This sign made it all the way to Oakland. On the return train that afternoon the Bakersfield Trainmaster took an extremely dim view of our sign and after the photo of it being installed on the helper it was removed, along with our expulsion from the property. The crew thought it was a nice sign. No sense of humor in Bakersfield...

Our parting view and memories of "Pokey"  seen as the markers get smaller and smaller leaving Mojave.

Next we traveled to Barstow and spent the night in the VW waiting for the last eastbound San Francisco Chief and Grand Canyon. The Super Chief-El Capitan was to continue on as the Southwest Limited after this night.

The next day we caught the next to last westbound City of LA in Cajon pass. I also have included a couple of shots of the City in it's last month of operation.

Next was the last City of LA into Union Station. Both of us rode from East LA to Union Station. Seen also is the last Sunset arriving Union Station and a San Diegan under new NRPC(Amtrak) ownership.

Final train was the westbound Super Chief which we caught in Pasadena and rode into Union Station. Ticket agent at Pasadena wrote on our tickets "last 2 local tickets sold on ATSF #17 El Capitan at the last stop before destination 8:20 AM May 2, 1971 last run as a name - privately owned train".

And that was that.

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