In November, 1949, less than three years after introducing the streamlined Empire Builder, Great Northern announced that it was spending $9 million on 66 new cars that would make up a brand-new Empire Builder to be placed in service in … Continue reading
Here are two more Western Star route guides, these being from 1965 and 1967. Except for changes in train times, the 1965 guide is similar to the 1963 guide, including the ads for the rail credit card and Big Mountain … Continue reading
As we have previously seen, the 1960s route guides for the Empire Builder consisted of an elaborate map that unfolded to be nearly three feet wide. These Western Star route guides cover the same ground in a brochure that is … Continue reading
This menu touts Seattle’s Century 21 World’s Fair, which dates it to 1962. This fair brought so much business to the Great Northern that it purchased coaches from Chicago & North Western to supplement those that were already in its … Continue reading
We’ve already seen a Western Star menu featuring one of Charles Russell’s many paintings of a buffalo hunt on the cover. This one is different because the words “Western Star” on the front cover are in black letters instead of … Continue reading
We’ve seen menus similar to this one before with aqua coloring for the cover illustration. This one has the same illustration but uses a deep blue coloring in honor of the recently adopted Big Sky Blue paint scheme. My previous … Continue reading
This is one of my favorite brochures and I had intended to use it when I first mentioned the Western Star more than three years ago. But I wasn’t satisfied with the scans I had made of it, and I … Continue reading
This hand-colored postcard claims to show the eastbound Oriental Limited ascending west towards the Great Northern’s old Cascade Tunnel. To reach the tunnel, which opened in 1900, the old line made a 180-degree turn at Scenic (the site of a … Continue reading
As we have seen, during the 1950s the Great Northern endeavored to make the Western Star the match of the Empire Builder in every way except for not providing dome cars (and even then added one dome coach to the … Continue reading
The Seattle World’s Fair gave passenger service on the Great Northern, and presumably the Northern Pacific, a reprieve not granted to many other railroads. It didn’t hurt that the Milwaukee Road–afraid that its money-losing Olympian Hiawatha would actually make money … Continue reading
