Non-Railroad Ads

In addition to the General Motors ad that appeared in the July, 1949 issue of National Geographic, several other companies placed CZ-related ads in Nat Geo or other magazines. One of them, naturally, was the Budd Company, which built the railcars.

Appearing in the April, 1949 issue of National Geographic, Budd’s ad shows the CZ in the same Feather River Canyon location, Rich Bar, portrayed in various brochures. Click any image for a larger view.

Standard Oil of California commissioned at least two paintings of the California Zephyr for use in ads boasting of its lubricating oils that were used in the train’s Diesels.

This ad showing the train passing through tunnels near Rich Bar was in the July 1949 issue of Fortune magazine.

I don’t know exact date of the Saturday Evening Post that carried this ad, but it was some time in 1949.

In 1950, Western Pacific bought two Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) from Budd to serve the same route as the California Zephyr but during different hours so Nevada residents would have access to daytime service. The real reason for the service was to carry railroad work crews: it their first year of operation, these “Zephyrettes” (yes, the same name applied to the CZ’s stewardesses) carried three times as many rail employees for free as they carried revenue passengers.
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Budd’s ad for the Western Pacific RDC’s appeared in a 1950 issue of National Geographic. Since the RDC’s ordinarily operated by themselves, they technically weren’t trains, which saved the Western Pacific money because Nevada law required it to pay firemen on all trains.

In 1953, by which time the CZ had developed its reputation as “the most talked-about train in the country,” it appeared anonymously in this ad for Kodak movie cameras. The dour-looking conductor in the illustration is supposed to be endorsing the camera but he looks more upset than anything.

This Kodak ad was in the August 1953 issue of National Geographic.

Curiously, though the train is certainly the California Zephyr, the locomotives are in the Western Pacific’s freight colors, not the passenger colors. Since the difference between passenger and freight locomotives was a steam boiler to keep the train heated, it is possible that freight locomotives could have pulled the train a few times in the summers.

This Oldsmobile ad was in the March 1964 issue of National Geographic.

In emulation of the vista dome, the 1964 Oldsmobile Vistacruiser had small, dome-car-like windows for passengers in the rear seats. Unlike dome-car windows, the Olds windows were more ornamental than useful, but the company didn’t hesitate to portray its car in front of the California Zephyr‘s domes somewhere in Colorado. Oldsmobile was, of course, a division of the same General Motors that made the CZ’s Diesels.


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