It was a cold morning on January 10, 1976.  That day my father decided to take my brother and I to Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California to visit the American Freedom Train pulled by SP steam locomotive No. 4449.  The tour inside the train was very interesting, but what I remember the most was the steam locomotive.  I remember how huge those 80 inch drivers were!  And the steam!  I was able to check out a live steam engine up close, something I never had done before ... thanks dad!

WHY?

Why this website?  Why do you want to work on this project?  What do you want to accomplish from this?  These are the questions I was asked while working on this website.  I had three reasons.

First, I wanted to honor my father.  I remember while growing up he had an HO train layout in our garage.  I had a great time watching the trains run around and around, especially his SP Daylight passenger train.  He would also take the family on trips to visit train museums and go on train rides.  And the train stores were fun too.  Thanks dad!  I dedicate this website to you!

Second, over the years I became more interested in the history of the SP Daylight.  After years of gathering information and buying a multitude of books and SP Daylight memorabilia (I think Amazon has a special van for my address now), and studying the rich history of the SP Daylight train, I realized how hard it is come by some of the information today.  Some of the books are out of print now and hard to find.  Someone who is starting out to find information about the SP Daylight train might not know where to look, like I did many years ago.  Information was scattered all over the place.  Why not share what I have found?

And that leads to the third reason.  What better way to share the information I have gathered by placing it on the internet for all to find?  Thus this website was born.  At first I thought I could knock this site out in a couple of weeks ... a few years later I THINK I am finished!

SPECIAL THANKS

I want to give special thanks to David Randall of RPC Publications, Inc. for giving me permission to use his photos from his book “The Official Pullman-Standard Library, Vol. 5, Southern Pacific Prewar Cars”.  If it was not for him, I would not have much to show on the Consist page.  I highly recommend getting a copy of his books.  Though volumes 5 & 6 are out of print, you sometimes can find copies for sale on Ebay or doing a used book search on Amazon or AddAll.

CONTACT INFO

I hope you enjoyed the website and discovered something you did not know before.  If you have any questions about this website or questions about the books I listed on the Reference page (I have most of them and can lookup stuff for you), or if you find a correction I need to make, please feel free to contact me at mike@spdaylight.net.

Thanks for checking out my website!  -mike