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• Overland Limited
• Overland Flyer

The Overland Limited leaving 16th Street Station, Oakland, in 1906
Overview
First service	November 13, 1887 (1887-11-13)
Last service	1963 (1963)
Former operator(s)	Union Pacific Railroad Southern Pacific Railroad Milwaukee Road Chicago and North Western Railway

The Overland Limited, known as the Overland Flyer from 1887–96, and often shortened to Overland, was a passenger train on the Overland Route between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. The Southern Pacific handled the train west of Ogden, Utah and the Union Pacific Railroad carried it to Omaha, Nebraska; it continued to Chicago on the Chicago and North Western for most of its life.

History

On November 13, 1887 the Union Pacific introduced the Overland Flyer, a daily train on the Overland Route via Council Bluffs, Iowa, the "point of commencement" of the Union Pacific chosen by President Lincoln in 1864. Between Chicago and Council Bluffs/Omaha it ran on the Chicago and North Western, except for a few years after 1905 when it used the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. West of Ogden, Utah it ran on the Central Pacific Railroad (then operated under lease by the Southern Pacific) to Oakland where passengers boarded the ferry to San Francisco. The Overland Flyer was one of the first named passenger trains in the United States.

The name had its roots in the West. In 1868 Bret Harte, chronicler of the California Gold Rush, founded a monthly literary magazine named The Overland Monthly published in San Francisco by A. Roman & Company, and various stagecoach companies used "Overland" in their names. The Overland was the subject of a documentary film short in 1901.

For a few years starting in 1905 a section of the Overland used the Milwaukee Road between Chicago and Council Bluffs. Lucius Beebe speculated that perhaps the Union Pacific intended this as a temporary measure to coerce better performance from the Chicago and North Western (a section of the Overland continued to use the C&NW during the period).

The five-trips-a-month streamlined City of San Francisco appeared in June 1936 and the five-trips-a-month steam-powered Forty-Niner was added in July 1937; they cast the Overland in the shade, but it remained the top daily train on the route until the City went daily in September 1947. In 1955 the Overland became an Oakland-Omaha train, with no cars to Chicago, and after summer 1956 it was just the San Francisco section of the City of St Louis, running between Oakland and Ogden. (Trains 27/28 between Ogden/Green River and Omaha became no-name coach-only trains — no cars from west of Ogden, no sleepers and no diner. In 1960 even that remnant quit running between Ogden and Laramie; it ran Laramie-Omaha until 1967-68.) The Overland came to an end as a year-round train on July 16, 1962 when the Interstate Commerce Commission approved its termination, with the City of San Francisco handling what through traffic remained. It ran between Oakland and Ogden in summer 1962 and around Christmas, but after summer 1963 it was gone for good. The SP declined to revive the train in 1964 amid some controversy.

Schedule

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In February, 1901 the Overland took 74 hours 15 minutes from Chicago to San Francisco. In 1920 the schedule was 72 hours each way for about 2260 miles, leaving San Francisco at 9AM and Chicago at 7:10PM. The schedule was about 68 hours each way from November 1920 until November 1926, when it dropped to 63 hours each way with $10 extra fare for the full trip. (One-way fare on a 68-hour train in the 1920s was $103.47 including the Pullman charge for a lower berth.) In June, 1929 the Overland run dropped to 58 hours each way leaving San Francisco daily at 9:40PM and Chicago at 11:50AM. In 1931 the Overland was combined with a slower train and its schedule was around 60 hours with no extra fare until 1946. That June it dropped to 49 hr 20 min westward leaving Chicago 3PM, and 48 hr 30 min eastward departing San Francisco at 11:30AM.

Name

The name “Overland” was not adopted for the Council Bluffs/Omaha to San Francisco route (the "Pacific Railroad") until almost two decades after it opened in 1869 when the Union Pacific inaugurated its Overland Flyer. The UP changed the name to Overland Limited on November 17, 1895; the SP dubbed its service The Ogden Gateway Route, its westbound train being the Pacific Express and eastbound the Atlantic Express before adopting Overland Limited on October 15, 1899. The name alternated between Overland Limited and San Francisco Overland Limited until July 1947 when "Limited" was dropped.

Equipment

In 1941–42 the train was partially re-equipped with streamlined sleepers built by Pullman-Standard. In March 1952, toward the end of its existence as a through train, the San Francisco Overland carried Chicago–San Francisco sleepers, a New York–San Francisco sleeper carried on alternate days by the New York Central Railroad's Wolverine and the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pennsylvania Limited, and a summer-only sleeper for Yellowstone Park conveyed to the Idahoan at Green River, Wyoming.

The Southern Pacific introduced a "Hamburger Grill" car between Oakland and Ogden on October 24, 1954. The SP was bullish, saying the burgers were among "the finest meat products of Southern Pacific territory." Lucius Beebe was unimpressed, noting the car, and the coffee-shop car that replaced it, as part of the decline of the train.

See also

• Overland Limited of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
• Passenger train service on the Union Pacific Railroad

References

• Beebe, Lucius Morris (1963). The Overland Limited. Howell-North Books. ISBN 0831070382. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Maiken, Peter T. (1989). Night Trains: The Pullman System in the Golden Years of American Rail Travel. Chicago: Lakme Press. ISBN 0-9621-480-0-8. OCLC 20461978. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Solomon, Brian (2000). Union Pacific Railroad. Osceola, Wisconsin: MBI. ISBN 0-7603-0756-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Welsh, Joe; Bill Howes (2004). Travel by Pullman: a century of service. Saint Paul, MN: MBI. ISBN 0760318573. OCLC 56634363. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Welsh, Joe (2008). Union Pacific's Streamliners. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-2534-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

v t e Passenger trains of the Southern Pacific
Named trains	Acadian Apache Argonaut Arizona Limited Beaver Californian Cascade Coaster Del Monte El Yaqui Golden Rocket Golden State Imperial Klamath Lark Oregon & California Express Oregonian Owl Limited Peninsula Commute Rogue River Sunbeam Sunset Limited Suntan Special Tonopah Express West Coast
Daylights	Coast Daylight Daylight Limited Morning Daylight Noon Daylight Sacramento Daylight San Joaquin Daylight Shasta Daylight
Overland Route	Challenger City of San Francisco San Francisco Challenger San Francisco Overland Pacific Limited Gold Coast Saint Louis Express

1. Beebe 1963, p. 28
2. Beebe 1963, p. 27
3. IMDB has "1901" and another short 1901, however cf. John Huntley Railways in the cinema 1969 p.89 "THE SHORT FILM In addition to films like "Darlington Centenary" and "Night Mail" (see pages 47 and 52) the railways of the world have inspired countless documentary, instructional, factual, poetic, compilation and amateur films. ...Union Pacific Overland Limited (Edison, 1902)"
4. Beebe 1963, p. 31
5. Beebe 1963, p. 50
6. Cooper 2010, p. 45
7. Signor (1985) p. 213
8. Beebe 1963, p. 51
9. Cooper 2010, p. 44
10. Welsh 2008, p. 31
11. Solomon 2000, p. 74
12. Welsh 2008, p. 85
13. Maiken 1989, p. 339

• Named passenger trains of the United States
• Passenger trains of the Chicago and North Western Railway
• Passenger trains of the Milwaukee Road
• Passenger trains of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company
• Passenger trains of the Union Pacific Railroad
• Railway services discontinued in 1963
• Railway services introduced in 1887