Southern Pacific inaugurated its streamliner service between Houston and Dallas in 1937. The two sets of equipment were dispatched from each terminal in the morning as the Hustler, making all local stops along the way. Then, at the end of the line, they were turned and sent back as the mile-a-minute Sunbeam express. Originally the Sunbeam was scheduled non-stop (although, being steam-hauled, you could expect to have water stops every fifty miles or so), but by the time of this timetable it had shoehorned in flag stops at College Station and Ennis. While Diesel locomotives were making inroads on Southern Pacific's passenger services by 1950, reports indicate that the Sunbeam and Hustler were still running behind steam at least part of the time.

I have an interesting traveler's report about this train from a Mr. Clyde Howard. It seems that as a six-year-old in 1950 his grandmother took him to the station in Dallas to send him back to Houston. As his family lived closer to Houston's Union Station, they were in the habit of riding the Rock Island or Burlington trains back and forth (which see). Well, when Grandma arrived at the station in Dallas, the first thing she saw was a departure board showing a five o'clock train departing for Houston. Clyde objected that it was the wrong train, but Grandma was insistent. The departure time was right, the destination was right, so that was the train she put him on. Once onboard, he kept protesting to everyone who would listen, but they all put his complaints down to fear of traveling alone for the first time.

It WAS the wrong train. To be specific, it was the Sunbeam. Clyde relates that he didn't as yet know the railroad or train names, but he did know that the "red trains" went to one station and the "silver trains" went to another—and that his parents would expect him to be on a silver train. All the way to Houston he kept fuming about not being taken seriously, but he was comforted by the thought that "the train people won't let anything happen to me."

And he was right. The SP conductor, concerned that a genuine mixup might have occured, called ahead during a water stop to notify Houston that an unaccompanied minor might be arriving at the station unexpectedly, and a passenger agent was waiting to meet Clyde there when he arrived. Meantime, when Grandma got home she mentioned to Grandpa that Clyde had complained that he was being put on the "wrong train". Grandpa asked her, "Well, which train DID you put him on?" When a flustered Grandma couldn't remember for sure, that prompted a long-distance call to Houston to alert Clyde's parents that he might be arriving on a different train. While his parents still went to Union Station to meet the Sam Houston Zephyr, they sent a neighbor to the Southern Pacific's station to keep an eye on the arriving Sunbeam. And so all ended well.

While the thought of putting an unaccompanied six-year-old on a long distance train today would probably prompt a call to the nearest child welfare agency, in that day and age it didn't even raise an eyebrow. I have heard stories of unaccompanied pre-teens who were even sent on overnight sleeping car journeys on their own with only their tickets and a couple of dollars for the dining car. It was a different world.