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
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
My final Charlie Russell menu, at least for now, isn’t actually in my collection; I found this 1956 Buffalo Hunt lunch menu at Waterlevel.com, a web site that allows people to share their rail and other collectibles. This menu, and … Continue reading
The most expensive item on this 1956 Indian Warfare (aka For Supremacy) menu was a $3.25 (about $27 in today’s dollars) “special dinner” featuring broiled lobster tail and hot butter, complete with soup or juice; potatoes; vegetable; salad; biscuits; dessert; … Continue reading
This 1957 Indian Warfare dinner menu included the exact same Lenten Special as the lunch menu. This one is stapled inside instead of paper clipped, so rather than harm the paper I left it in. Curiously, the a la carte … Continue reading
Here is a 1957 lunch menu that has a “Lenten Special” paperclipped inside. A sockeye salmon loaf doesn’t sound like much of a sacrifice for Lent; diners who didn’t like salmon could still have a choice of tuna salad sandwich, … Continue reading
The five Russell paintings used on Great Northern menus (and reproduced in the observation cars) were painted between 1895 and 1899. Russell married in 1896 and his wife Nancy soon took over the business side of his art, helping to … Continue reading
Desperate Stand does not depict any particular battle but was a typical cowboys-and-Indians story that Russell imagined, probably because action portraits like this were popular. Click image for a larger view. In contrast to the action on the menu cover, … Continue reading
