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If the Rock Island’s claim of being the best road to Yellowstone was shaky, it at least had a viable claim to be a good route to California. This 1927 brochure advertises that people can take either the Golden State … Continue reading
Category Archives: CRI&P
This 1923 brochure makes the difficult case that people should take the Rock Island to Denver on their way to Yellowstone National Park. From Denver, travelers could take Rock Island “connections . . . to any of the four Yellowstone … Continue reading
The Rocky Mountain Limited was Rock Island’s pre-streamlined entry into the Chicago-Denver market. Likely a distant third after the Burlington and Union Pacific, Rock Island had the slight advantage that its line split in eastern Colorado, allowing direct service to … Continue reading
The Apache was a joint Rock Island-Southern Pacific train that ran over the Golden State route between Chicago and Los Angeles from 1926 to 1938. A 1937 timetable posted by the Rock Island Technical Society actually shows three trains on … Continue reading
This dinner menu dates from 1965. Though a single card the same size as the 1966 breakfast menu, the smaller print indicates a wider variety of choices. Still, rivals City of Los Angeles and Super Chief/El Capitan continued to use … Continue reading
Like the breakfast menu, the Golden State‘s lunch menu by the mid-1960s had become a single card. This 1967 menu is on pink paper, instead of cream, and is slightly smaller than the 1966 breakfast menu. Company offers the high … Continue reading
This 1966 breakfast menu is all contained on one side of a single card, as opposed to the folders used for 1950s Golden State menus. At least the train has a menu: by April, 1964, passenger ridership had fallen so … Continue reading
Passengers on the Golden State or another Rock Island train might get tickets in this ticket envelope, the gold color of which is possibly meant to be a reminder of the train name. Click image to download a PDF of … Continue reading
This colorful booklet describes the Golden State, the streamlined train that replaced the heavyweight Golden State Limited in January, 1948. The inside back cover of the brochure is marked “1-53,” suggesting it was printed in 1953, the last year the … Continue reading
In February, 1956, just a month after the Aerotrain made its first revenue run, the Rock Island Railroad placed the redundantly named Jet Rocket in service between Chicago and Peoria. The train consisted of cars built by ACF combined with … Continue reading