OPINION — Getting there, they say, is half the fun. One group of travelers would have begged to differ. Because what should have been a brief trip 74 years ago this month turned into a disaster movie-scale nightmare. Think of it as “The Perfect Storm Meets the Donner Party.”
There was little reason for concern as 196 passengers and 30 crew members boarded a sleek streamliner train in Chicago bound for the San Francisco-Oakland area, 2,100 miles to the west. True, it was a long voyage, but the travelers were going in style.
The City of San Francisco was the pride of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In a time when airfare was still grossly expensive and federal interstate highways hadn’t been built, rail lines offered travelers a third option. The owners made this train as luxurious as possible.
