Southern Pacific inaugurated the Cascade in 1927 in commemoration of the completion of the Natron Cutoff over the Oregon Cascade Mountains. This route was considerably shorter than the Siskiyou route the railroad had been using between Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area. On August 13, 1950 — which is also the date on this booklet — Southern Pacific streamlined the train, and this booklet from Bill Hough’s collection describes that new train.
Click image to download a 13.6-MB PDF of this 12-page booklet.
The centerfold pictures a cutaway view of the train’s triple-length “Cascade Club,” a 130-foot-long room that contained a 44-seat diner and a 44-seat tavern-lounge. The third part of the car was a kitchen. The drawing mistakenly shows the car behind the lounge resting on an articulated truck with the lounge car.
Most of the rest of the booklet describes the all-room sleeping car accommodations. The booklet doesn’t say so, but the streamlined Cascade was an all-Pullman train for just under two months, as SP added coaches in October. Initially at least, four of the sleeping cars continued from Portland to Seattle on Union Pacific’s pool train — the Train of Tomorrow — and returned to Portland on Northern Pacific’s pool train in time to catch the southbound Cascade.