I would like to find out the cost of a train ticket on the Santa Fe & Topeka railroad around 1940, from Alpine Texas to Santa Fe via El Paso.
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2Have you checked the Kansas Historical Society's Railroad research page?– Steve BirdJan 30, 2021 at 22:34
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Thank you. I will check this as both you and another recommended this source.– FictionWriterJan 30, 2021 at 23:18
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1 Answer
To preface, you might be a little hard-pressed to find a consolidated database for rail fares information from that time period on the internet. The best case scenario would be local timetables that survived in some archive, or maybe internal correspondence that happens to include the pricing policies, both of which have a low chance to be digitized.
That being said, Kansas Historical Society has this archive index for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
https://www.kshs.org/archives/89502
One of the documents mentioned is an advertisement "New Faster Schedules on the Santa Fe" dating from 1946. This could be useful to extrapolate a price, although the difference in the routes and the lack of prices on the advertisement limits its usefulness:
http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/l-zjjpy5o25upmxe.jpg
Another useful resource can be this compilation by Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which is a national average and only goes back to 1960:
https://www.bts.gov/content/average-passenger-fares-current-dollars
That being said they seemingly have a direct line for library assistance, which can be a lot more helpful for your purposes:
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2Thank you! Took a quick look. A wealth of information for me to peruse. So very useful. Jan 30, 2021 at 23:22