U.S., Kansas City Southern History: ‘The Sweetheart of American Trains’

Editor’s Note: On this day which is only 11 months until Christmas Day in 2021, we are pleased to welcome David R. Peironnet as a guest commentator.

By David R. Peironnet, Guest Commentator; January 25, 2021

The Southern Belle, Sweetheart of American Trains, began service in late 1940, little more than a year before Pearl Harbor Day. For travelers living along the Kansas City Southern and the Louisiana & Arkansas Railways, arrival of a streamlined passenger train in the late Depression years was incredible. This amazing thing was pulled by diesel electric locomotives and carried sumptuous all-aluminum cars. To someone living in rural Arkansas, arrival of the Southern Belle would have been only slightly less astonishing than the actual arrival of visitors from the planet Mars.

From then until its final runs in November, 1969, the Southern Belle somehow stayed a notch above average. The “Belle,” as everybody called it, was beyond its prime in the last years of operation, but was still clean for every run, on time or pretty close to it, heat and air conditioning worked, offered a diner/lounge car with every meal prepared to order, and except for the last months after the Pullman Company ceased operations, provided roomettes and bedroom accommodations quite similar to those found on the Twentieth Century Limited and the Super Chief

Employees still had some pride in their work. The Belle wasn’t ever the best but it was nobody’s slouch … and everybody saw to it.

End terminals were Kansas City and New Orleans, big impressive cities but the Belle more reflected the character of the Ozark plateau and the Ouchita Mountains. Intermediate stops were in nice communities: Joplin, Missouri; Mena, Arkansas; and Shreveport, Louisiana, with odd border incursions into Pittsburg, Kansas; and Texarkana, Arkansas/Texas.

The Belle maintained a reputation for a friendly, unpretentious character of the passengers it served. People were just nice to one another.

And, the scenery? Not many people think of America’s central states as a source of scenic wonderment. Yet the Ozark Plateau offers extraordinary natural beauty. The Ozarks and neighbor Ouchita Mountains make up North America’s oldest mountain chain, 1½ billion years older than the Rockies.

In 1940, KCS/L&A gave cities along the Belle a pre-inaugural tour of cities along the route. The tour was impressive even by today’s standards. 

On that tour, more people walked through the amazing new train than actually lived in a couple of towns. Commemorative coins were struck using aluminum refined from bauxite mined in Arkansas, symbols of the aluminum streamlined cars built by Pullman Standard.

Beauty contests were sponsored in each town served by the Belle, and winners went to New Orleans to compete in the Miss Southern Belle competition. Margaret Landry of Shreveport was the winner, making her the Southern Belle whose image appeared on the round-end lounge car’s drumhead. Stars of the Mutual Radio Network’s popular Lum & Abner radio program served as judges, along with an elderly Confederate Army officer and some now lost to history KCS/L&A traffic department officials.    

Once daily service began, KCS assigned hostess-nurses to each train, just like big railroads as the Union Pacific and the Santa Fe. Among their duties was to help prepare the Southern Belle radio show which ran on a station about halfway through the run. The “Southern Belles” as the hostess-nurses were called, would circulate on the train, talk with passengers, make notes, then prepare a message for the conductor to throw off at a depot just before the town with the radio station. The depot agent would retrieve the message, telegraph the next station where the depot agent could then call a local radio station where the KCS bought an hour of time.  The announcer could read the information on the air: “Billy and his sister Sue are riding the Southern Belle today to Kansas City to visit their grandparents. John and Louise and Becky are riding the Southern Belle to Texarkana to visit their cousins.” The Southern Belle hostess set the train’s radio to that station as the train approached. Children (and more than a few adults) were astonished that a radio announcer somehow knew they were on the train, and even said so on the air! (A few years ago, actually a few decades ago, I had the good fortune to meet one of the Southern Belle nurses who described the show. The radio station was probably in Watts, Oklahoma as the timetable for the Belle at that time showed the northbound and southbound trains meeting in Watts. The radio program could thus be heard on both trains.)

World War II brought the hostess-nurses and the radio show to an end but the KCS/L&A made its point: it was a modern railroad. 

Post WWII improvements included the purchase of new Pullmans and additional coaches and baggage cars. Full dining cars began service and the original diner/lounges were rebuilt into full lounge cars of exquisite design. The Hospitality and the Good Cheer, with their etched  glass depictions of the old South, would give a run for the money to even Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss of Broadway Limited and Twentieth Century Limited fame. 

Into the 1960s, the Southern Belle suffered less competition from taxpayer subsidized highways and aerobirds. Road construction through the Ouachita Mountains was un-gawd-ly expensive. There are few towns between Kansas City and New Orleans with sufficient population to support air carriers regardless of how many subsidies are offered. But in time the highways were built.

By the early 1960s, Pullman traffic declined so the full dining cars were withdrawn from service. KCS bought ex-New York Central round end lounges and reconfigured them to diner/lounges. The immeasurably sumptuous lounge cars were assigned to the Flying Crow offering light sandwich and breakfast service between Shreveport and Port Arthur.

None-the-less, KCS bought new coaches from Pullman Standard in 1965. America’s war in Vietnam required the movement of a lot of soldiers and sailors, and there were military bases near the KCS line. The Southern Belle was reliable and reasonably priced so it picked up a lot of military passengers on leave.

New coaches were spartan. Seats offered a lot of legroom but that’s about all you could say in the category of “good/worth mentioning.” Particularly disgusting were the green windows which KCS specified so they wouldn’t have to maintain window shades. Only Pullman passengers escaped this indignity as even the diner/lounges had the putrid green slapped on the glass. This was perhaps the idea of W.N. Deramus III who got the president’s job in the mid-1960s not long after the death of his father who had completely revitalized the KCS/L&A decades before. Many have said, there is nothing quite like a few shares of stock on a resume to help get a cushy job. 

Deramus the third, or 3D had allegedly previously squeezed the life out of the Katy, and before that, the Chicago Great Western. No maintenance function could be deferred long enough.

A “Deramus innovation” was elimination of plates and silverware from the diner. Meals were served on paper plates and utensils were plastic. None-the-less, menus were appealing, even if limited, and everything was cooked to order.

Former NYC lounges were comfortable despite the putrid green windows. And, there is no seat on any train quite like that of a seat in the round end.

The end of the Southern Belle only a year and a half before Amtrak came at about the right time. It was still a pretty decent train, what with relatively new coaches, a dining and lounge car, and baggage service to nearly every station. Trains were well maintained and clean. Had the Belle lasted even another year, memories of the Belle might have been darker. Things were declining nationally for passenger trains, and some historians say 3D’s dark shadow was starting to descend over the whole railroad. Up to that point, “old heads” in the KCS took care of the Belle but after a few years, 3D was changing the corporate culture. KCS previously emphasized customer service. Under 3D, the focus was on generating dividends, regardless of whether that would degrade service, be it on passenger trains or freights. 

A few years later when the Chinese were buying vast quantities of US wheat and grains, the Interstate Commerce Commission actually embargoed the KCS from handling grain cars which did not originate on that line. The reason was simple: too many cars were falling off the rails. Car leasing firms and even other railroads were complaining they could not make money on cars lined up at repair shops. As there is additionally enormous expense associated with moving wrecked cars, the ICC finally had to accept the reality that the KCS had become a burden on interstate commerce.

Fast forward a few years when the board of directors finally convinced another Deramus, 4D, to take some money and leave. Michael Haverty, previously of the AT&SF was hired, and promptly initiated an aggressive revitalization program. 

Haverty turned the executive train into a new Southern Belle, and used it to court business leaders and politicians along the route much as W.N. Deramus had done in the 1930s and into the 1960s.

Haverty even talked – openly – about actual commuter trains which might operate east from Kansas City along a Chicago & Alton line which KCS had acquired. Nothing ever came of it though the idea is not completely dormant.

The Sweetheart of American Trains is today long gone and mostly forgotten. None-the-less, Amtrak passengers might find the last iteration of the Belle a refreshing change from the superannuated Amfleet and Horizon cars, green windows notwithstanding. As noted, meals were cooked to order. That counts for something.

Will there ever be a Kansas City to New Orleans Belle again?  Probably not.

However, rising energy costs will figure into future transportation decisions. Incoming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promises to takes a fresh look at America’s transportation mix.

Also, almost no one wants to talk about the cost of maintaining America’s roadway system, but we’re running out of words like “million” and “billion” when talking about rising highway maintenance costs. Something like mega-tetrahedon quadrillion dollars or roughly enough money to run a streetcar from the moon to Mars will be necessary. 

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