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The Super C passes through blue-stem-grass country, where herds of beef cattle are fattened for slaughter. After a red sunset over the Kansas prairie, the engineer switches on the regular headlights and a rotating white Mars light, which cuts a circular cone through the dark. The shiny tops of the distant rails reflect the jewel-like green signals, a row of beckoning beacons in the night. Engineer O.K. Stewart remembers meeting a bobcat on the tracks one night. "Those old eyes were glowing as big as baseballs when we came around the curve," he says.
6:30 A.M., BELEN, N. MEX. The caboose is no Pullman car, but it is comfortable enough with folded-down seats to sleep on, a lavatory, a small refrigerator, a water cooler and an oil stove, which serves to heat the car and warm the breakfast coffee cake. The desert dawn is bright and clear; the sun backlights the Manzano Mountains to the east. The train climbs continually to the Continental Divide crossing at Gonzales. "Back in the days of hand-fired steam locomotives, we were real glad to get here," says Ray Derksen, acting train master at Gallup. Derksen points out a hotbox detector at trackside, an infrared gadget that spots defective wheel bearings; one installation can cost as much as $50,000, but a single derailment caused by a hot box can be much more expensive.
10:55 A.M., WINSLOW, ARIZ. A tear in the metal roof of the lead trailer has orsened, so in the 25 minutes we stop here, a maintenance crew makes a quick patch. From Winslow the line climbs again to its highest point at Riordan, the 7,313-ft. Arizona Divide. On a fast train like the Super C the crews get a full day's pay for as little as 2½ hours on the railroad. The men lay over in Seligman; if they are not assigned a return run within 16 hours their pay starts again The pay is good: the average on the Albuquerque division is more than $12,000 a year, with senior engineers making $18,000 easily. Trainmaster E.L. Kidd notes that practically all of the men who run the Santa Fe come from railroading families.
3 P.M., NEEDLES, CALIF. From the River crossing, it is uphill across the Mojave Desert, hazy with heat, sand swirling beneath high purple mountains. We make a triple meet, going into a siding at 15 m.p.h. to pass a loaded 84-car coal train that is so heavy it must stick to the main line; at same time an eastward freight sweeps by on the descending grade. After Victorville it is a climb of 1,106 ft. in 19 miles to the summit of Cajon Pass, eerily shrouded in fog. We crawl along, watching for signals looming out of murk, then creep down the steep slope, air brakes hissing, to San Bernardino. Suddenly all is neon lights, freeways, gas stations and palm trees.
9:40 P.M., LOS ANGELES. We pull into the terminal at Hobart in southeastern Los Angeles, end of the 2,202-mile journey from Chicago. It has taken only 39 hours and 20 minutes, 40 minutes faster than scheduled — a trip faster than that of the Super Chief, the Santa Fe's crack passenger train. Twelve minutes after we stop, the first trailer has already been unloaded by a giant yellow straddle crane and driven away.