Serving Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, and intermediate points
Amtrak train numbers: 12 and 13
Predecessor railroad train numbers: Southern Pacific 98 and 99
The Coast Daylight was the Southern Pacific Railroad's crack passenger train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. When Amtrak took over passenger train service in 1971, it began running to Oakland instead and was extended south to San Diego. Amtrak's Coast Daylight ran as a four-day-a-week operation, with a train called the Coast Starlight running to Seattle on the other three days of the week.
Within a couple of years, the Coast Starlight was expanded to daily service and the Coast Daylight name disappeared from the timetables; train numbers 12 and 13 were later given to two overnight Northeast Corridor trains, the Fast Mail and the Mail Express.
In the early 2000s, the state of California and Amtrak planned to revive the Coast Daylight, operating daily from Los Angeles up the peninsula to its historic San Francisco terminus and stopping in additional cities bypassed by the Coast Starlight. However, state budget problems put the start of the service on hold.
Condensed historical timetables:
READ DOWN READ UP
(1956) (1972) (1972) (1956)
----- 8:35A Dp Oakland Ar 8:40P -----
7:15A ----- San Francisco ----- 5:00P
8:18A 9:55A San Jose 7:10P 4:10P
2:41P 4:26P Santa Barbara 12:24P 9:30A
5:00P 7:15P Los Angeles 10:15A 7:15A
----- 10:10P Ar San Diego Dp 7:00A -----
The Amtrak Train Names Project