Santa Fe’s Surf Line, running from aconnection with the transcontinen-tal main line just east of Los Angeles,through San Diego to National City,
Calif., was always distinctive for its closeproximity to the ocean and its authenticSouthern California character. Orangegroves, Mission-style depots, and stain-less-steel streamliners were its stock intrade. Never a player on the nationalscene, everything changed with WorldWar II. Southern California, instead ofbeing a backwater as it was in WorldWar I, became the jumping-off point forthe U.S. war effort in the Pacific.
Of the three transcontinentals thatserved California—Santa Fe, SouthernPacific, and Union Pacific—Santa Feplayed the lead role in the transportationof fighting men. Only it served all threeof California’s principal seaports, SanDiego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco,and each was essential to the war effort,with shipyards, aircraft construction,and training centers. The Surf Line, pas-toral at war’s outbreak, forever changedinto a main artery.
PASSENGER TRAINS AND OPERATIONSSan Diego, not Los Angeles, would
have been the big city had the railroadnever been invented. It had an outstand-ing harbor, whereas Los Angeles had tobuild its harbor from a tidal swamp.Railroads changed everything, and in theearly 1900s, Los Angeles overtook SanDiego in size and importance. Trainsfrom the east began terminating in LosAngeles, and Santa Fe’s line to San Diegobecame a secondary line. Regardless,Santa Fe served San Diego from LosAngeles with fast passenger service,about 31⁄2 hours each way. In the 1920sand ’30s, there were typically four trainsin each direction, some with throughPullmans and parlor cars.
San
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In a classic Surf Line scene, a San Dieganspeeds along the Pacific Ocean east of San
The Santa Fe’s Line to San Diego on the Eve of War
SURF LINE, 1940
To Los Angeles San Luis Spur, abandoned 1916
Pacific St.
5th
St.
6th
St.7th
St.
8th
St.9t
h St
. California Highway Dept.
Standard Oil
Cold storageBeer warehouseGrocery warehouse
Fertilizer warehouse
N
P A C I F I C O C E A N
San
Luis
Rey R
iver
0 200100 400 600 800 1000 feet
Oceanside, California, 1941To San Ysidro
To Kansas City
RedlandsDistrict
Abandoned1891
To Oakland Barstow
LOS ANGELES
Pasadena
Victorville
Summit
San Bernardino
Colton
National City
OCEANSIDE
SAN DIEGO
Linda Vista
Del MarEscondido
Fallbrook
Elsinore
San JacintoLong Beach
OrangeAnaheim
Santa Ana
Fullerton
Atwood
Redondo
San Juan Capistrano
San Clemente
AT&SF Fourth DistrictFullerton to National City
S A N T A A N A
M O U N T A I N SP A C I F I C
O C E A N
0 10 20 30 miles
In March 1938, as part of Santa Fe’sdebut of diesel-powered streamliners, theSurf Line got the San Diegan. The singletrainset made two round-trips daily,using a baggage mail, lunch counterdiner, three to four coaches, and a parlorobservation, behind a single unit, Elec-tro-Motive E1A No. 7. This diesel wasassigned to the Surf Line until rebuilt asan E8 in 1952. When out of service formaintenance, it was usually replaced by a3700-class 4-8-2 or 1337-class 4-6-2.
In 1940-41, a pair of heavyweight pas-senger trains made a round trip each.One was an all-stops local, carrying astorage mail, baggage express, and twocoaches. The eastward train arrived inSan Diego in the middle of the night, butpassengers were allowed to stay on boarduntil 7 a.m. The other train, a holdoverfrom the previous all-heavyweight sched-ule, carried a baggage mail, baggage ex-press, coaches, smoker, and parlor obser-
vation. Until July 1940, this train also hada lightweight coach and a 14- or 16-sec-tion tourist Pullman off Santa Fe’s Scout.It arrived in San Diego at midday, turningaround in two hours for the trip home.
Ridership ballooned with the growthof defense industry and training centers.Santa Fe added equipment as needed tothe scheduled trains, as well as extra sec-tions. By 1940, it was obvious that addi-tional schedules and equipment wereneeded. It ordered a second San Diegantrainset from Budd. In the meantime, theValley Flyer consist augmented the sched-ule. The Valley Flyer was created in 1939for service from Bakersfield to Oaklandfor the San Francisco World’s Fair. Theall-heavyweight train consisted of threecoaches, a diner, a lounge, and a baggage-club. It began service on the Surf Lineon October 27, 1940, running withoutthe diner until February 1941.
New equipment from Budd arrived inearly 1941, enabling the addition of thesecond San Diegan in June. The secondconsist mirrored the first: each train hadfive to six chair cars, a lounge, lunchcounter diner, and a chair observation,which was converted from the parlorobservation. Power usually was E1s, thenwith booster units, or E3/E6s. The basicschedule of two San Diegans making tworound trips each, plus a steam-powered,heavyweight local, became the norm forthe next few years. During the war, thetrains often ran in multiple sections.
FREIGHT TRAINS AND TRAFFICFreight business was largely through
business, as there was little on-line traffic.Grazing and orange groves dominated.Rancho Santa Margarita, one of the lastof the original old California ranchos,sprawled north of San Diego all the wayto Orange County. In 1942, the U.S. gov-ernment acquired it and built the Marine
In 1946, as part of its extensive Surf Line
improvements, the Santa Fe replaced the
aging Oceanside depot with this modern
concrete design. The small building at the
right housed the CTC machine and operator
for the local territory. Today, commuter
trains from Los Angeles and San Diego often
meet here.
66 T R A I N S A U G U S T 2 0 0 4
San
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Kan
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Sta
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To San Diego
Cleveland St
South Broadway
Myers St.
Tyso
n St
.
1st S
t.1s
t St.
2nd
St.
2nd
St.
3rd
St.
3rd
St.
4th
St.
4th
St.
Tope
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ve.
Mich
igan
Ave.
Miss
ouri
Ave.
Wash
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ve.
Min
neso
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ve.
Wisc
onsin
Ave
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Wisc
onsin
Ave
.
Oak S
t.
Ash
St.
Elm
St.
Pine
St.
Fir S
t.
Packing housesupplies Bean warehouse
Bean warehouse
Railroad cottages
Railroadcottages
OceansideLumber Co.
Shell Oil
Park
Grain warehouse
Union Ice
Richfield OilUnion OilTruck terminal
Stock pen
Station
Dispatching office
Engine servicing facilities
P A C I F I C O C E A N
Corps’ Camp Pendleton there. The baseretains its wild character even today.Even Orange County, today the epitomeof sprawl, then was mostly orange grovespunctuated by small towns such as SantaAna, Anaheim, and Orange.
With certain exceptions, notably theConsolidated Aircraft Co., builder of theB-24 Liberator bomber, prewar SanDiego was a consumer, not producer, ofgoods. Most of the city’s industrial baseconsisted of light manufacturing sup-porting the fishing trade, such as can-ning, net-making, and boat-building.
The Surf Line thus needed only twofreights each way per day, one from LosAngeles and one from San Bernardino.These did the local work en route, andran at night to avoid the daytime passen-ger schedules. Only Santa Ana, in theheart of the citrus industry, rated a dedi-cated switcher, and daily-except-Sundaymixed trains worked out of Oceanside tothe citrus packing houses in Escondidoand Fallbrook.
These freights had many idiosyncra-cies. L.A.-San Diego No. 136 was a sec-ond-class time freight, one of very few on
the Santa Fe—the road preferred to runfreights as extras. Its primary role was tohandle livestock, perishable, and mer-chandise traffic off Chicago-L.A. hotshotNo. 43. It left First Street Yard in L.A. at10 p.m., arriving Fullerton at 11 p.m.,Santa Ana 11:35 p.m., Oceanside 1:35a.m., and San Diego at 3:10 a.m. Theengine crew would leave the train in the
T R A I N S M A G . C O M 67
The stainless-steel cars of a San Diegan glit-
ter under the floodlights in a postwar scene
at San Diego. The SDG&E power plant oppo-
site the depot was a landmark for years.
Rob
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yard at San Diego, and tie up at theengine servicing facilities in NationalCity. A yard switcher would sort the trainfor delivery to industries or interchangewith SP’s San Diego & Arizona Eastern.
The westward counterpart of No. 136was an extra, but it had a nifty name: the
Nightcoast. It was scheduled out of SanDiego at 10 p.m., and arrived in L.A.about 9 the next morning. It needed theextra running time to do local work fromOceanside to Fullerton, picking up cars atSan Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Orange,and Anaheim.
The San Bernardino freights wereextras, symbols SDX and SBX. Daily-except-Monday SDX left San Bernardinoat 10 p.m. and was scheduled to arriveSan Diego at 6 a.m. It handled the lessimportant freight off No. 43 that was notallocated to No. 136. It also carriedempty reefers beyond Orange County forloading. SBX left San Diego at 7:30 p.m.,with a San Bernardino arrival of 6 a.m. Itdid all the work from San Diego toOceanside, as well as pick-ups at the sta-tions for movement to San Bernardino.Cars for L.A. were left at Santa Ana orOrange, as the SBX (and SDX) wentfrom Orange to Atwood via the Olive Dis-trict. A quirk of the timetable was that atrain running from San Diego to Orangeran westward, then became eastwardfrom Orange to San Bernardino.
Other Surf Line locals were SantaAna-Los Angeles each way: a Santa Ana-Oceanside turn; and a San Diego-Del Marturn. The Santa Ana-L.A. trains left at
68 T R A I N S A U G U S T 2 0 0 4
Pacific 1369 barrels through San Clemente
with train 73 on November 5, 1940. En-
gines 1369 and 1376 and a heavyweight
consist were painted silver with red, black,
and yellow striping for the Bakersfield-
Oakland Valley Flyer. After the Flyer came
off, the colorful set moved to the Surf Line.
Ger
ald
M.
Bes
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Cal
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Sta
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Mus
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6:30 a.m., arriving at about 2 p.m., whilethe turns left in the mid-morning, return-ing about 6 p.m. to their respective hometerminals. The locals handled delivery,pick-up, and spotting of cars, while thenight freights did the hauling to and fromL.A., San Bernardino, or San Diego.
The prewar freights were short, oftenfewer than 25 cars. Santa Fe assignedthem its smaller, older road power, suchas 3100-class 2-8-2s, 900 and 1600-class2-10-2s, and even 1950-class 2-8-0s. Bywar’s end, some of Santa Fe’s big 3800-class 2-10-2s were necessary to maketime on full-tonnage trains. Prewar trainsbound for San Diego that were too heavyto make the 2% helper grade at LindaVista left their tonnage at Oceanside forpick-up the next day.
WAR CHANGES EVERYTHINGThe wartime tonnage increase was re-
markable: Surf Line ton-miles soared
from 315,554 in the first quarter of 1940to 864,112 in the same period of 1942!The number of trains ballooned from anaverage of 16 per day in 1941 to an aver-age of 42 in 1943.
This was a lot of traffic for a second-ary line! In 1939, as defense spendinggeared up, Santa Fe began a majorimprovement program, replacing 90-lb.rail with 112-lb., and adding almost 23miles of second track. Miles of auxiliarytracks were constructed, passing trackslengthened, curvature eased, and yardsenlarged. A whole new yard was built atSan Diego, relieving congestion at theold depot yard. Because of its proximityto the ocean, the Surf Line was vulnera-ble to washouts from storms and floods.South of Del Mar, crews raised 31⁄2 milesof track three feet in elevation andplaced 30,000 cubic yards of rip rapalong the ocean at San Clemente. Newdepots were built at Anaheim, Orange,Santa Ana, Oceanside, and Linda Vista.
The biggest change came with theinstallation of Centralized Traffic Con-trol. Previously, trains moving by time-table and train orders often had to waitfor hours because dispatchers couldn’tkeep up. Double-tracking was consid-ered, then rejected because of costs and
manpower shortages. CTC, with certaintrack changes, boosted capacity at a costsomewhat less than double-tracking.
CTC installation began in 1943, andsoon paid off. In 1944, Railway Signalingreported that freight trains were savingtwo hours or more in running time. Timewas saved in helper-engine moves, too,doubling them from one cycle in eighthours to two in eight.
World War II changed the world, andit changed the Surf Line. No longer a sec-ondary main through rural country, itbecame a vital link between two of Cali-fornia’s largest cities. Yet even today, withthe Santa Fe’s San Diegans replaced byAmtrak’s Surfliners, one can get a glimpseof the old prewar Surf Line. You just haveto look quickly. 2
KEITH JORDAN and his wife, Deborah,live in the Kansas City area. He’s an engi-neering consultant in the railroad indus-try and is active in the model railroadinghobby. This is his first TRAINS byline.
T R A I N S M A G . C O M 69
E1 No. 7 stands at the San Diego depot on
March 27, 1938, just in from L.A. with the
first revenue run of the San Diegan. The sta-
tion’s many-arched forecourt structure was
demolished in 1954 for a parking lot.
Ernest Sevde
MAGAZINE
Visit a layout based on the Surf Line in theAugust 2004 issue of Model Railroader.
