A funeral service is set for Saturday, Dec. 17, for Menlo Park resident Arthur Lloyd, a career railroad man, ardent advocate for rail passenger service and columnist for the Almanac on rail and public transit issues.
Mr. Lloyd died peacefully at home on Dec. 4 at the age of 91. With him when he died were his daughters Lynne Rosenberg and Liane Strub.
The funeral is set for 10:30 a.m. at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at 178 Clinton St. in Redwood City. A reception at MacArthur Park restaurant in Palo Alto follows the funeral, with free round-trip Caltrain tickets available.
Before he moved to Menlo Park in 2011, Mr. Lloyd was long a resident of Portola Valley and was, until 2014, a longtime member of the boards of Caltrain and the San Mateo County Transit District.
Mr. Lloyd commuted by rail to San Francisco for 40 years and needed no help with time tables in remembering Caltrain schedules, he told the Almanac in 2002. To say he had an interest in rail travel and railroads probably understates the case.
In 1942, according to a CV provided by SamTrans, he signed on as a yard clerk with the San Francisco and Napa Railroad.
He served in the U.S. Army medical corps during World War II, but said that he asked for the transportation corps. After the war, and after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, he became a partner in the Berkeley-based Sequoia Stages/Eastshore Lines intercity bus line in 1946.
He joined the Western Pacific Railroad in San Francisco in 1949 as an information clerk and rose to assistant director of public relations before leaving in 1961 to join a travel service in San Francisco.
In 1971, he joined Amtrak as a sales manager in Washington, D.C., and retired in 1991 as director of public affairs for the Western United States. Amtrak honored him with a “Champion of the Rails” award in 2002.
Mr. Lloyd subsequently joined the SamTrans and Caltrain policy boards. In his March 2014 letter resigning from Caltrain’s overseer, the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, Mr. Lloyd noted the board’s arduous effort to preserve the commuter service.
“The fact that a 150-year-old railway is beloved by a new generation of riders is something to be celebrated, and I am proud of my role in making that happen,” he wrote.
His railroad associations include the San Joaquin Valley Rail Committee, the Coast Rail Coordinating Council, the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association, and the California State Railroad Museum Foundation. He was president of California Operation Lifesaver, an organization that promotes railroad safety, and was an adviser to the Golden Gate Railroad Museum.
In 2003, he was appointed secretary to the American Public Transportation Association’s Transit Board Committee in Washington, D.C. The committee addresses the concerns of local transit boards throughout the United States, and is responsible for overseeing association policies.
Mr. Lloyd sold his Portola Valley home in 2011 and moved to a Menlo Park condo on Alma Street alongside the Caltrain tracks. At his new home, “he could tell his caregivers whether a train was on time or not each time he heard one passing,” Ms. Strub said.
His wife Eleanor Hutson Lloyd preceded him in death in January 2010. Mr. Lloyd is survived by daughters Lynne Rosenberg of La Honda and Liane Strub of Redwood City (and an English teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School); son Lawrence Lloyd of Chico; seven grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
