NYC - LA HSR Line?

Hungerford's book is available at amazon.com, for anyone who wants to buy a copy online.

I'll look at Hungerford's times and compare them with Amtrak's:
Boston - NYC: 3:30
NYC - DC: 3:20
NYC - Chicago: 15:00
NYC - SF: 1:16:00
Chi - SF (estimated): 1:01:00
NYC - Everett - Fairbanks: 3:15:20
NYC - Mexico City: 2:18:15

Amtrak:
(Amtrak dist., Hwy dist., Time)
Bos - NYC: 231 mi - 235 mi - 3:35 (Acela), 4:10 (NE Regional)
NYC - DC: 225 mi - 230 mi - 2:50 (Acela), 3:20 (NE Regional)
NYC - Chi: 959 mi - 974 mi - 20:00 (Lake Shore Limited)
NYC - Chi: 925 mi - 860 mi - 19:00 (Pennsylvanian + Capitol Limited treated as continuous)
Chi - Emy: 2438 mi - 2262 mi - 2:04:00 (California Zephyr)
No service to Fairbanks or Mexico City.
Fairbanks would require a lot of construction, and the easiest way to get there from the contiguous states is through Alberta and Yukon. That is because the coast is mountainous all the way.
Service in Mexico would require some "MexTrak", and no Mexican politicians seem interested in setting one up.

His Boston - NYC - DC times are close to Amtrak's. His NYC - Chi is somewhat faster: 62 mph vs. 48 mph, and his Chi - SF is much faster and 98 mph vs. 47 mph. A miscalculation? Adding a day makes it close to Amtrak's time. Interestingly, his NYC - Mexico City speed is around 39 mph.

I think that he was imagining existing train speeds - I don't think that he imagined anything close to TGV speeds, though he might have imagined more electrification.

lpetrich wrote: I think that he was imagining existing train speeds - I don't think that he imagined anything close to TGV speeds, though he might have imagined more electrification.

Don't forget in 1945 the speed record for rail was 127 mph IIRC, and service speeds much over 80 mph were rare. In fact, up until the early 1960s it was thought the limits of steel wheel on steel rail in service were about 125 mph. Nobody could have envisioned it being possible to go 200 mph or over in 1945, much less being routine as it is these days.

The mid 1960s were something of a "golden age" for jet travel. The reason I put quotes around "golden age" is that at that time I was living near a Boeing manufacturing plant. We could watch exhaust-spewing 707s scream across the sky all day long. They were so loud that all conversation would stop and everyone would sit silently waiting for the noise to end. The SST program was also ramping up and we used to frequently experience sonic booms from test jets exceeding the speed of sound; those booms would shake every window in the house and scare the bejeebers out of everyone and our pets. Thankfully, the car alarm hadn't yet been invented. I'm sure that the steam trains of that "golden age" also were very rude neighbors.

Hungerford does provide some maps of his trains, but they're rather small. It looks like the fastest NY to LA service, called "The Chief", is via a Lake Shore Limited plus Southwest Chief routing. Leave NY 1630 Sunday, lv Chicago 0800 Mon, lv KC 1540 Mon, lv Albuquerque 0910 Tue, Arrive LA 2100 Tue.

There's an "Overland Limited" SF to NY train that appears to follow the UP Overland route SF-Ogden-Cheyenne-Omaha-Chicago then it looks like it runs via Broadway Limited (?) to NY. There's a note in the front of the book saying that train takes exactly 50 hours, leaving NY at 1640 daily.

There's also a routing from the west coast that mimics the Desert Wind's branches from SF and LA via Ogden, heading east through Moffat Tunnel to St. Louis. At Indianapolis the train splits again with sections to DC, Philly and NY or Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany and NY.

The Pacific NW gets service via both the GN and NP routes, but no north-south route to California is shown. In fact, no north-south trains are shown on any of the maps.

I neglected to correct for time zones for my estimates of the Hungerford times.

(schedule)
NYC - SF: 1:19:00
Chi - SF (estimated): 1:04:00
Speed: 87 mph

(description: 50 hours)
NYC - SF: 2:02:00
Chi - SF (estimated) 1:11:00
Speed: 70 mph

The NYC - LA route:
NYC - Chi: 16:30
Chi - LA: 1:15:00

Amtrak:
Chi - LA: 2265 mi - 2112 mi - 1:18:30 (Southwest Chief)
Speeds: 58 vs. 53 mph