Special Trains to early Super Bowls?

[081552]

I have a question for rail and football fans. Were any special trains operated in the pre-Amtrak area to the first five Super Bowl Games? Courtesy of Google, not my memory; 1967 Los Angeles, 1968, 69, 71 Miami, and 1970 New Orleans.

[BaltACD]

I don't know for certain, however, the first several Super Bowls weren't even sell outs in the stadiums they were held at....they had to try to 'drum up' people to fill the empty sections of the stands.  The Super Bowl has grown over the years.

[Paul of Covington]

    If I remember right part of the problem with at least the first super bowl was sticker-shock.    People protested the high price for tickets--about $65, I think.

[wjstix]

I strongly suspect there were no trains to the Super Bowls. I was a strong MN Vikings fan in 1969 and I sure can't recall anything of the sort for Super Bowl IV. By 1969-70 chartered airline flights were pretty common, I bet there were some group packages available for tickets and the flight and hotel rooms in New Orleans etc.

In my mind, railroad football specials are more connected to college football, kinda like commuter trains bringing people to big games at the local college, or people from the east or midwest going to L.A. for the Rose Bowl when their local university was playing in it.

The Pennsy used to send a lot of trains to the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia each year, those trains may have been the last really big football special trains to run??

[ZephyrOverland]

081552

I have a question for rail and football fans. Were any special trains operated in the pre-Amtrak area to the first five Super Bowl Games? Courtesy of Google, not my memory; 1967 Los Angeles, 1968, 69, 71 Miami, and 1970 New Orleans.

I know your question focuses on the pre-Amtrak era, but there was at least one Amtrak-era special train that was operated to a Super Bowl game.  In January 1986, the 20th Century RR club of Chicago charted an Amtrak Superliner consist, and operated it as the Super Bowl Shuttle for Super Bowl ticketholders from Chicago to New Orleans.  I was on the club crew and the sold out train was a financial and operational success.  It was operated to arrive a few hours before the game so passengers can have dinner and do some sightseeing in New Orleans.  We left about 1am on Monday and arrived in Chicago that evening.

[081552]

Thanks for the post-Amtrak comments. Continuing on the earlier response from wjstix, you could probably start a long discussion on college football game trains.

[aricat]

I do recall reading that Santa Fe did operate a Super Bowl train to Los Angeles for Super Bowl I. The Kansas City Chiefs played in that Super Bowl against Green Bay. I do not know if the train operated only from KC or started in Chicago. The only other time special trains might have operated for a Super Bowl III with Baltimore Colts playing the New York Jets. Both routes; New York-Baltimore-Miami and Chicago-Kansas City- Los Angeles still had good passenger rail service and two railroads(Santa Fe and SCL) who still knew how to run quality passenger trains. Super Bowl V was played between the Colts & Cowboys in 1971 and Dallas Texas was down to one passenger train. I also doubt that Super Bowls II&IV had passenger specials.