The 1949 Tropical Trips booklet has its name on both the front and back covers. While the front cover has flamingoes (which were also on the back cover of yesterday’s 1948 booklet), the back cover features flamingoes in the water … Continue reading
“Florida . . . and the Sunny South,” reads the front cover, but the real title of this booklet is on the back cover: Tropical Trips. The Atlantic Coast Line published an annual booklet of that name at least since … Continue reading
Here’s another timetable contributed by Ellery Goode. All of the timetables provided by Mr. Goode are from 1954 through 1956, which were the peak years of streamlined trains in the United States. The railroads were still buying new passenger cars, … Continue reading
Like the Seaboard, Atlantic Coast Line still had a lot of Florida trains in the 1960s. At the top of the list was the New York-Naples/Miami Champion, ACL’s answer to Seaboard’s Silver Meteor. In addition, there was the New York-St. … Continue reading
In the turn-of-the-20th-century corridors we’ve examined to date — New York-Chicago, Chicago-Los Angeles, Chicago-Seattle, and Chicago-Twin Cities — a large share of the passengers were traveling for business. In the Florida corridor, however, most travel was for pleasure. This 1906 … Continue reading
The Atlantic Coast Line began in 1871 as a joint advertising name for two small railroads that wanted to work together. Over time, more railroads were added to the system, but it wasn’t until the late 1890s that they were … Continue reading
I’ve previously written about the technologies that made streamliners possible, including Diesels, metallurgy, and air conditioning. One other technology worth mentioning is the paint or, more specifically, the lacquers that gave most streamliners their bright colors and brand identities. Even … Continue reading
I mainly collect menus from western railroads, but it appears I have enough to identify one series from the Atlantic Coast Line that was still used after the merger into the Seaboard Coast Line. These menus had a portrait-style color … Continue reading
Here are two more menus from the Ira Silverman Collection. These were used on the Florida Special, a winter-only all-Pullman train (in contrast to the Champion that initially was coach-only but later added sleeping cars). Like the Champion, the Florida … Continue reading
Ira Silverman is a railfan who actually rode the trains whose menus he collected. He later donated 238 of those menus to the Northwestern University library. I’m posting a few here to fill out the Atlantic Coast Line series of … Continue reading
