C’est Vrai: Quicker travel, slower mail

It was front-page news all across the area in late October 1902 when Southern Pacific announced a new schedule that offered two trains a day running across south Louisiana to connect New Orleans with San Francisco.
Assistant Passenger Agent F. S. Decker said that beginning on Nov. 15, the Sunset Limited which had been making the run only three times a week during the winter would run every day and that a new train, the Golden Gate Express, would also connect the Pacific to the Mississippi.
A westbound Sunset Limited was scheduled to leave Union Station at New Orleans at 10:45 each morning and an eastbound train was to arrive at 6:45 in the evening. A westbound Golden Gate Express was to leave New Orleans at 9 o’clock at night and the eastbound train was to arrive in New Orleans at 8:35 each morning.
According to a report in the Jennings Daily Record on Oct. 28, “The putting on of this revolutionized service was determined upon some months back and is in the greatest part due to the untiring and unceasing efforts of Assistant Passenger Traffic Manager Sam F. B. Morse, who left no stone unturned to bring the service of the Southern Pacific across the continent up to the highest standard.”
The Welsh Rice Belt Journal reported Oct. 31 that the Sunset Limited would include “one Pullman standard compartment car, consisting of seven compartments and two drawing rooms” and a Pullman sleeper, “in addition to coaches and chair cars and dining car service.” The Golden Gate Express was to be equipped with coaches and chair cars, a standard buffet, Pullman sleeper, and drawing room.
The Jennings newspaper proclaimed that the coaches “built especially for service between New Orleans and California” and were “of the very latest model, having every convenience.” Railroad men, according to the press account “pronounced it the finest train that ever came into New Orleans, the cars being a marvel of beauty and finish.”
Southern Pacific touted the new service in ads that appeared in newspapers across south Louisiana (and elsewhere) promoting “superior service” on the Sunset Limited to Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, New Mexico, California and Pacific Coast Points.” For those traveling from the west, the advertisement noted that Southern Pacific trains made connections at New Orleans with Morgan Line steamships bound for Havana, New York, and other ports.
But, at least in Jennings, opinion changed quickly about service provided by the swanky new trains and it took only a couple of days before the newspaper editor began to hear complaints that “the change in the railroad schedule is causing a great inconvenience to the people of Jennings, especially so in the late arrival of the mail.”
The Jennings mail was carried by the much touted Sunset Limit, which was supposed to arrive in Jennings at 5:50 p.m. but, according to the newspaper, was seldom on time — and sometimes way behind schedule.
“In a large number of instances that compels many people to wait for their mail until the next morning,” the Daily Record reported. “Heretofore they could get their mail the same evening. … A great deal of complaint is heard from the patrons of the [post] office, owing to the late arrival of the evening mail.”
Townspeople were preparing a petition “asking the Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service at Fort Worth, Texas, … to change the arrival of the mail” by putting it on another train that arrived in Jennings just after 1 p.m.
I couldn’t find any report of whether the superintendent moved the mail to the other train or whether the people of Jennings (and presumably of other points on the SP line) had to accept delayed mail as one of the prices of progress.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.