page_title: Hi-Level
section_title: Santa Fe
hierarchical_section_title: Hi-Level / History / Santa Fe
caption_attribution_description: Postcard photo of a car on the Santa Fe Railway's El Capitan streamliner.
context_page_description: The Hi-Level was a type of bilevel intercity railroad passenger car used in the United States. Car types included coaches, dining cars, and lounge cars. Most passenger spaces were on the upper level, which featured a row of windows on both sides. Boarding was on the lower level; passengers climbed up a center stairwell to reach the upper level. Vestibules on the upper level permitted passengers to walk between cars; some coaches had an additional stairwell at one end to allow access to single-level equipment. Santa Fe and Budd considered but never created a sleeping car.
  The Budd Company designed the car in the 1950s for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for use on the El Capitan, a coach-only streamliner which ran daily between Los Angeles and Chicago. The design was inspired by two recent developments in railroading: the dome car, employed in intercity routes in the western United States, and bilevel commuter cars operating in the Chicago area. Budd built 73 Hi-Level cars between 1952 and 1964.
  The first two prototype coaches entered service on the El Capitan in 1954 and were immediately successful.
context_section_description: The Budd Company approached Santa Fe in 1952 with the proposal to build long-distance bilevel cars, building on the gallery commuter car concept. Santa Fe accepted the proposal, and took delivery of two prototype coaches in 1954. The cars went into regular service on the El Capitan. Following a positive customer response, the Santa Fe ordered 47 more cars: ten 68-seat "step down" coaches, twenty-five 72-seat coaches, six lounges, and six dining cars. These constituted five equipment sets ("consists"), sufficient for daily service on the El Capitan. The project cost $13 million.
  A press trip took place between Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh on June 16, 1956, using the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (and presaging the use of Superliners on Amtrak's Capitol Limited). Santa Fe exhibited the equipment throughout the United States during June and early July. A formal christening took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on July 8, with the duke of Alburquerque in attendance. Regular revenue service began on July 15. The new train was far more efficient than its predecessor. As Fred Frailey explained:
  ... a conventional El Cap ran 16 cars, carried 438 people and weighed 1,069 tons. Fred Gurley's $13 million got Santa Fe a 13-car train (including the same head-end cars) that carried 130 additional people and weighed 110 tons less ...
  — Fred Frailey, Twilight of the Great Trains
  Trains editor David P. Morgan thought the equipment was "comfortable" and "[rode] well, even above 90 mph". S. Kip Farrington wrote that he was "definitely sold on the high level in every angle" and that it was "here to stay". A typical train comprised two step-down coaches, five standard coaches, a lounge, and a dining car. The Hi-Level cars continued in service after the Santa Fe combined the El Capitan and Super Chief in 1958. The Santa Fe also converted six single-level baggage cars to baggage-dormitories (Nos. 3477–3482), with a spoiler at one end to create a visual transition. The cars dated from the 1938 version of the El Capitan.
  Despite their success, the cars did not inspire a wave of imitators. By the late 1950s, private-sector passenger travel was in what turned out to be irreversible decline. Most railroads were cutting service; few ordered new equipment of any kind. An exception was the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW). The CNW, like the Burlington, used bilevel coaches on its Chicago-area commuter routes. In 1958 it ordered thirteen intercity bilevel cars from Pullman-Standard: ten coaches, a parlor car, a coach-parlor, and a coach-lounge. Visually they resembled the CNW's existing commuter equipment; a noticeable difference from the Hi-Levels was the adoption of head-end power (HEP) instead of steam. The cars entered service on the Peninsula 400, a Chicago–Ishpeming, Michigan, day train, on October 26, 1958. The CNW would be the only other railroad to introduce bilevel equipment on intercity runs.
  By the 1960s, the Santa Fe encountered capacity problems on the San Francisco Chief, which ran between Chicago and San Francisco. Unlike the El Capitan, the Chief carried a mix of sleeping cars and coaches. To augment capacity, the Santa Fe ordered an additional 24 coaches in 1963–1964: 12 step-down and 12 standard. This was the final major order for new long-distance passenger equipment before the coming of Amtrak; after Kansas City Southern Railway bought ten new coaches from Pullman-Standard in 1965, no new locomotive-hauled coaching stock would be built until the first Amfleets arrived a decade later. Each San Francisco Chief carried four Hi-Level coaches, displacing six single-level coaches.
caption: The exterior of a Hi-Level lounge on the El Capitan soon after completion in 1956
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