The Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) and Union Pacific Railroad ran three daily round trips between Portland and Seattle. The SP also operated the tri-weekly Cascade between Oakland and Portland, Oregon. The closest equivalent was the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP)'s West Coast, which ran via the San Joaquin Valley from Los Angeles to Portland from 1924 to 1949, with through cars to Seattle via the Great Northern Railway (GN).īy 1971, the SP operated just two daily trains between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area: the Los Angeles–San Francisco Coast Daylight via the Coast Line, and the Los Angeles–Oakland San Joaquin Daylight via the Central Valley. History Background īefore the formation of Amtrak, no passenger train ran the entire length of the West Coast. In FY 2016, the train had a total revenue of $40.5 million, a decrease of 1.4% from FY 2015.
Its name is a combination of two prior Southern Pacific (SP) trains, the Coast Daylight and the Starlight.ĭuring fiscal year (FY) 2019, the Coast Starlight carried 426,029 passengers, an increase of 2.0% from FY 2018. The train, which has operated continuously since Amtrak's formation in 1971, was the first to offer direct service between Seattle and Los Angeles. The Coast Starlight is a long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak on the West Coast of the United States between Seattle and Los Angeles via Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area.
