GOVERNMENT
Zephyrette Judy Sperbeck with conductor Jay
Monohan (left) and dining room steward Carl Bollinger (right) in the early 1960s. Below: Sperbeck smiles next to the Silver Horizon train car window bearing a plaque with her name during a Dec. 28 trip to Maricopa.
Left, below: Judy Sperbeck tours the Silver Horizon railcar with members of the Maricopa Historical Society Dec. 28. Above: Sperbeck and her train crew stop at a restaurant in Bond, Colo., in the early 1960s.
Love Train ‘Zephyrette’ reunited with railcar she ‘claimed’ after 60 years
BY BRIAN PETERSHEIM JR.
T
The Maricopa Historical Society helped Sperbeck understand what happened after she and the train car parted ways. Paul Shirk, the historical society’s president, recounted to Sperbeck the Silver Horizon’s history in the 60 years since, including its cameo in the movie Pearl Harbor and when cranes hoisted the 158,900-pound railcar onto a truck, which transported it to where it currently sits at the former Rotary Park on the corner of Plainview Street and Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway. “See, you didn’t know the Silver Horizon could fly,” Shirk said with a chuckle. He told her this was one of multiple railcars spread across the country. “There are six that are remaining in different states of repair or disrepair,” he said of the other California Zephyr railcars. “A couple of them are in museums. Usually, it’s a private nonprofit of some kind.” Sperbeck would later go back to work in 2000 at Chase Field, where she spent 19 years and got to witness Arizona’s only pro sports championship when the Diamondbacks won the World Series in 2001. Retirement wasn’t for her, so the 84-year-old continues working as a hostess at the Jim Beam Barrel Bar at the Footprint Center. A piece of her remains inside the train car itself. Sperbeck “claimed” the first window inside the door, where her name is engraved on the glass forever.
HE SILVER HORIZON RAILCAR has stories to tell about its cross- country endeavors during the glory days of luxury train service from
1949 to 1970. Judy Miller Sperbeck, 84, tells stories the train car, now a Maricopa museum, just can’t. After all, she walked through all seven of the legendary California Zephyr’s domed observation cars as a fresh-faced twentysomething. Sperbeck, who lives in Phoenix, visited Maricopa in December to walk inside the train car for the first time in six decades. When she stepped across the threshold, she felt a wave of memories from the scent alone. “There’s a smell to a train that is just unbelievable,” Sperbeck said with a huge grin. “It just brings back a lot of memories.” In her early twenties, Sperbeck spent three years working as a zephyrette, riding the rails between Oakland, Calif., and Chicago. It was an experience she said never let her down (except for the occasional lost luggage). It was in that railcar where she learned to play the bagpipes, cuddled with kittens and mingled with Major League Baseball players, circus elephants and countless other fascinating itinerant characters. She vividly remembered a humorous anecdote: She was using the loudspeaker to announce the train was entering the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel on the way into Salt Lake City. “Carl Bollinger was the dining car steward; he used to take my shoe off and start tickling
WHAT IS A ZEPHYRETTE?
Zephyrettes were stewardesses on the California Zephyr who aided rail workers and passengers alike, said Maricopa Historical Society volunteer Dorothy Charles. Clad in blue uniforms and always smiling, the zephyrettes collected postcards from passengers and mailed them at their next stop, distributed inbound communications, and helped women with children, children travelling alone, the elderly and disabled passengers. They also acted as tour guides, telling passengers what they may see through panoramic portals to their left and right, and letting them know when they were passing a scenic or important landmark along the track. “The main thing they did,”
my feet,” Sperbeck said. “I’m about ready to kill him.” Of course, words might come out wrong when your feet are being tickled. She announced the tunnel was 6.2 inches long, and didn’t even notice until a passenger flagged her down to clarify the units of measure. “I went, ‘Oh, my God.’ I didn’t even know that I said that,” she remembered fondly. “I said, ‘It’s Bollinger’s fault because he had my shoe off.’” Sperbeck couldn’t conjure an ill memory of her tenure as a zephyrette, and she attributed that to the people with whom she worked. “All of the employees, the people in the kitchen, the whole crew was cool,” she said. The end of her zephyrette career came in 1964 after three years on the job when she got married, a decision she said she wished she had never made. “It was really the best part of my life, doing this,” she said of the job.
Charles said, “is check to make sure that everything is in order and the people are happy.”
InMaricopa.com | February 2025
February 2025 | InMaricopa.com
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