Randy McFarland Wrote:
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> Does anyone have a photo of the "Owl," or memories
> of riding that long-gone Oakland-Fresno-L.A.
> passenger train,

Bob Morris has some photos of the Owl and other SP passenger trains at

[www.snowcrest.net]

I never rode the Owl, but I understand that towards the end of its career, it was down to a couple of F units, head end cars, 2 coachs, an automat, and a 6 section, 6 roomette, 4 bedroom sleeper.

There is a possibly apocryphal story that one night Oakland or Los Angeles managed to make up an Owl with only one vestibule. I don't know if this actually happened, or might just be a late night bull session story of some SP fans, but the story goes that the Owl ran one night with a coach-observation car, one of the coaches rebuilt from the Shasta Daylight Timberline Tavern cars, an automat that had been rebuilt from a pre-WW2 Daylight tavern car and the sleeper. The obs and ex-tavern cars did not have vestibules. Like I said, this is probably just the ruminations of some fans discussing how far SP might have gone to keep people from riding one of their trains.