Sam Houston Zephyr
Info
Type	Inter-city rail
System	Burlington-Rock Island Railroad
Termini	Fort Worth, Texas Houston, Texas
Operation
Opened	1936
Closed	1966
Technical
Line length	283.1 miles (455.6 km)
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)

The Sam Houston Zephyr was a named passenger train operated by the Burlington-Rock Island Railroad, a subsidiary of both the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. It was the first streamlined passenger train in Texas.^[1]

Inaugurated on October 1, 1936,^[2] the year of the Texas centennial celebrations, the streamlined train was named for Texas hero Sam Houston. On its original schedule, the train ran from the Texas and Pacific station in Fort Worth to Union Station in Houston, Texas, in exactly five hours, making only four intermediate stops in Dallas, Waxahachie, Corsicana, and Teague. The train was designated number 3 southbound, and number 4 northbound. Its chief competitor was the Sunbeam, operated by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad (a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific) on a parallel route between Dallas and Houston.

Like many other passenger trains that experienced declining revenues in the face of competition from automobiles and airplanes in the 1950s and 1960s, the Sam Houston Zephyr was discontinued in 1966.^[3]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Streamliner Schedules (timetable and consist of the 1950 Sam Houston Zephyr) [1]
• Ken's Weather and Railroad page (1956 photos and 1959 timetable of the Sam Houston Zephyr) [2]
• "Burlington-Rock Island Railroad," Handbook of Texas Online
• Dallas Railroad Museum, "A Brief History of Railroads in Dallas" [3]
• Burlington Route Historical Society, "The Burlington Zephyrs" (includes map of the various Zephyr routes) [4]