As the Santa Fe was growing its service to Los Angeles from Chicago, the Southern Pacific was expanding its own service between Los Angeles and New Orleans. While Wikipedia and other web sites seem to be confused about the railroad’s … Continue reading
We’ve seen this Sunset Limited menu before from the Ira Silverman collection at Northwestern University. Today’s example is from my own collection and is dated March, 1962 (compared with September 1962 for the Silverman menu). Click image to download a … Continue reading
This menu card was issued the same year as yesterday’s breakfast folder and suggests that in the mid-1960s Southern Pacific used the fancy folding menus only for breakfast and dinner, even on its premiere train. Of course, just four years … Continue reading
Here’s another in the series of Sunset Limited menus used by the Southern Pacific in the early 1960s. This menu is from the Ira Silverman menu collection at Northwestern University, and I’m including it here so I can display as … Continue reading
Here are some blotters whose scans were contributed by the same reader who gave us the Southern Pacific menus a few days ago. The first one features a January, 1927 calendar, but from the Merry Christmas message it clearly was … Continue reading
This booklet advertises the New Orleans connection between the Sunset Limited and Crescent, allowing passengers to go from coast to coast. As mentioned here previously, this “Washington-Sunset Route” was advertised from 1946 to 1949 and again from 1954 to 1956. … Continue reading
Here are five Southern Pacific blotters from the Dale Hastin collection. The first one, dated 1937, advertises “two famed trains to California,” the Sunset and the Argonaut. It lists SP agents in Birmingham and Chattanooga, neither of which were actually … Continue reading
Here’s a 1962 menu for the Sunset Limited. While the front cover shows a cowboy lassoing Texas longhorn cattle, the back has a six-paragraph biography of John James Audubon. The incongruity is lessened by the fact that the streamlined Sunset … Continue reading
Though born in England in 1881, Sam Hyde Harris was an artist for the Southwest: though he did not move to the United States until he was 15, he was already drawing scenes of what he imagined the West looked … Continue reading
The on-board stationery I have for the Sunset Limited uses old English lettering, suggesting that it dates from the heavyweight era. The envelope even says “San Francisco-Los Angeles New Orleans,” showing it is either from before 1930 or between 1936 … Continue reading
