The City of Miami required four different railroads to make the 1,500-mile trip between Chicago and Miami, and Illinois Central had the longest segment between Chicago and Birmingham. The trains left Chicago/Birmingham early in the morning and arrived at the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Illinois Central
This menu is about the same size and uses the same paper as the previous three, so is probably from the same late-1960s era. Unlike the breakfast and dinner blanks, this one is a four-page folder and not just a … Continue reading
This 1968 menu offers a respectable range of dinners from six different sandwich baskets to four “grill specials” including veal cutlets and a “grill sirloin butt steak dinner.” The steak dinner includes juice, French fries, a dinner roll, and beverage … Continue reading
This blank menu is clearly contemporaneous with yesterday’s, which if my guess is correct means it is from the late 1960s. The backs of the two menus are identical. Click image to download a 0.4-MB PDF of this menu blank. … Continue reading
There’s no date on this blank menu, but I suspect it is from the late 1960s when rail ridership and service was rapidly declining. The menu itself is made of glossy paper laminated onto regular paper. The back of the … Continue reading
This blotter bragged that Illinois Central’s three daily trains between Chicago and St. Louis were all “air-cooled.” Note that only the Daylight is “mechanically air-cooled” while the other two trains are merely “pre-cooled.” Good luck in staying cool on the … Continue reading
This beautiful blotter advertises Illinois Central’s all-Pullman Panama Limited from Chicago to New Orleans. The cloche hat worn by the woman in the picture dates the blotter to the 1920s, while the reference to Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pass Christian dates … Continue reading
The success of the Silver Meteor and Champion inspired several railroads to join with the Altantic Coast Line and Florida East Coast in providing coach streamliner service between Chicago and Miami in December, 1940. Such service was complicated by the … Continue reading
This undated ticket envelope advertises six streamliners: the all-coach City of New Orleans and all-Pullman Panama Limited, both Chicago-New Orleans; the City of Miami, which went Chicago-Birmingham on the Illinois Central and on to Florida on other roads; the Daylight … Continue reading
Four railroads competed for business in the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor: the Illinois Central; Alton; Chicago & Eastern Illinois; and Wabash. At least two of them acquired streamliners before the war. I’ve already mentioned the Illinois Central Green Diamond, which was … Continue reading