After the Post Office mail contracts were summarily canceled in September 1967 Santa Fe found itself, in the words of one commentator, with "too many Chiefs and not enough passengers." Santa Fe president John S. Reed announced, in his October 1967 "Eulogy to the Chiefs", that Santa Fe would seek to discontinue all passenger service excepting the Super Chief/El Capitan, the San Francisco Chief, the Texas Chief and the San Diegans.

With the exception of Santa Fe's remaining short hops and mixed locals, no train's neck was farther out on the chopping block than the Grand Canyon. Its "stop at every crossroads" local scheduling had been obsolete for passenger purposes since the rise of the automobile in the 1920s. There had been some justification for it while mail and express business had been significant—parcel post doesn't take kindly to being hooked "on the fly"—but with the cancellation of mail contracts and with REA Express steadily losing market share to newcomers like UPS, the Grand Canyon was quite simply a financial black hole.

The train would lose its name in early 1968 after the Fred Harvey company was sold and Santa Fe filed to end all service to the Grand Canyon national park. However, it would continue in operation. The railroad pressed the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to axe numbers 23 and 24 and reroute the San Francisco Chief into Los Angeles in its stead, ending all service in the San Joaquin Valley. The ICC turned them down.^[*] And so, as an afterthought of days gone by, the train soldiered on into 1971.

Take another look at that equipment. No through sleeper on most of the route, true, but full onboard food service during all normal meal hours and even a full lounge car had the train survived into the summer travel season. Full checked baggage service east of Albuquerque, with [almost certainly] connecting baggage service to most stops west of that point given a few hours' delay. Compare that schedule against some of the other trains of the period. Over a hundred regular and flag stops listed on the time card, plus an additional thirty or so places where the train might stop...yet it hustles from Chicago to Los Angeles in only 47 hours, or 46 for the return trip. That's faster than the final Golden State and within half an hour of the final City of Los Angeles, and both of those trains represented their operating railroads' very best foot forward. This is Santa Fe's third string—a train that they had been trying to dump for four years! If you wonder why travelers of a certain age with clear memories of the period remove their hats and speak in reverent tones when discussing Santa Fe passenger service, you need look no further.

Number 24 holds the distinction of being the final system owned and operated passenger train to run on the Santa Fe. While the Super Chief/El Capitan and Texas Chief would continue to operate, they shifted to Amtrak ownership and control effective with the first trains dispatched from Union Station on May 1. The last train dispatched by the Santa Fe left Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal at 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time on April 30, 1971. For the next forty-six hours as it hustled along the old Santa Fe trail through Needles, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Raton Pass, Dodge City, and Kansas City it represented the close of more than a century of tradition. The final Number 24 pulled into Dearborn Station on-time at 9:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time on May 2, and an era came to an end.

Edited To Add: After reviewing the other railroads' timetables, I see that it was the end of an era in more ways than one. Two trains were dispatched after Number 24's departure by founding Amtrak member railroads—the Southern Pacific's Sunset and the Burlington Northern's Western Star, both at 10:00 p.m.—but they both had significantly shorter runs than Santa Fe's final train. The Western Star pulled into its St. Paul terminus at 6:15 p.m. on May 2, while the Sunset arrived New Orleans at 8:10 by the timetable. (I do not have records of actual arrival times for either of these trains.) So, at least by the published schedules, Number 24 was the last regularly scheduled revenue passenger train ever operated by any original Amtrak member railroad. Yes, I do believe that this is significant.