Could there be a cooler name for a western-U.S. railroad than the Daylight, Sunset & Tehachapi RR? I don't think so.

Unfortunately, there's not a railroad named the Daylight, Sunset & Tehachapi.

But there is the Southern Pacific, with it's romantically named passenger trains. The Daylight ran between Los Angeles and San Francisco along the California coast. The Shasta Daylight skirted the base of Mt. Shasta on it's route between San Francisco and Portland.

The famous Sunset Limited ran the length of the great American Southwest, from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

And then there's Tehachapi, as in "the Tehachapi Loop". This is a place, not a train– and it's a place perhaps associated more with freight operations, but we can't really talk about the great Southern Pacific without mentioning Tehachapi.

This postcard depicts the steam-powered, but still streamlined, Southern Pacific Daylight, decked out in it's distinctive red and orange livery.

A minor quibble with the title "Southern Pacific 'Daylight' Coast Line, Los Angeles to San Francisco, California". There's something not quite right– can you figure it out?

Scroll back up– I'll give you a minute...

Did you catch it? That's right. The train is pictured with the Pacific Ocean to its right; therefore, this train is traveling south. Travelling south would be San Francisco to Los Angeles, not Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Let's take a look at another post card that pictures a steam-powered Daylight:

They did it again. This time, the ocean is to the left of the train. This means the train is traveling north. What does the title tell us? "San Francisco to Los Angeles." The only way to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles by traveling north is to circumnavigate the globe, and I'm pretty sure you run out of railroad track before you get to the North Pole.

Title aside, this is a beautifully composed postcard of the Daylight. We see the whole train, and there is a sense of movement. The train in the top card seems to be parked by the palm trees; there's no movement at all. This one is going to slide right off the edge of the card if we're not careful. On the ocean side of the train, the sea runs all the way to the horizon, and if you look out to the edge long enough, you swear you see the curve of the earth.