These menus are from the California Railroad Museum, which posted them at archive.org as individual pages. All I’ve done is assemble them into PDFs. Those that are dated range from 1915 to 1927, but some probably fall outside that range. … Continue reading
I’ve shown this menu cover before in a post about the Exposition Flyer. But that was a low-resolution scan taken from another web site. This one is higher resolution and, unlike the other menu, it was never used so it … Continue reading
The back cover of this menu describes the lands between Salt Lake City and the Sierra Nevada as “the Western Garden of Allah.” Whether this was inspired by the Rock Island Railroad’s Garden of Allah book, or the 1936 movie … Continue reading
Here’s the 1965 edition of yesterday’s timetable. Except for the cover date, six of the eight pages in the two timetables are identical in almost every respect. The page listing Western Pacific agents is different as some of the agent … Continue reading
Of the three railroads that shared the California Zephyr, Western Pacific was the only one that, after 1960, published a timetable exclusively for that train. This was for the very good reason that, while both Burlington and Rio Grande operated … Continue reading
Western Pacific didn’t have a lot of branch lines, and didn’t run passenger trains on any of them after World War II. So it’s main train before 1949 was the Exposition Flyer and after 1949 the California Zephyr. But it … Continue reading
The Golden Gate Exposition ended in 1940, but the Burlington-Rio Grande-Western Pacific train named after it was so successful that the railroads kept it going. This attractive train booklet creatively uses just three colors of ink–blue, orange, and black–on most … Continue reading
In 1929, Western Pacific–which was built by Jay Gould’s son, George Gould, as the western link in his Missouri Pacific-Rio Grande-Western Pacific transcontinental route–was no longer financially connected with the Rio Grande or Missouri Pacific, but it was still dependent … Continue reading
We’ve seen an edition of this brochure from the late 1930s and one from about 1950. Here’s a version from around 1916 that features not only the Rio Grande but Western Pacific’s Feather River route. The brochure’s map is dated … Continue reading
Instead of a folder with a pocket, Western Pacific ticket envelopes were real commercial envelopes. The size is somewhat unusual: 3-1/2″ x 7-1/2″. The closest I can find for sale today is 3-7/8″ x 7-1/2″, the so-called Monarch envelope. WP … Continue reading