Sunset Limited 1964 Lunch Menu

This menu card was issued the same year as yesterday’s breakfast folder and suggests that in the mid-1960s Southern Pacific used the fancy folding menus only for breakfast and dinner, even on its premiere train. Of course, just four years later the railroad eliminated the sleeping cars and replaced the diner with an automat car.

Click image to download a 572-KB PDF of this menu.

This card offers five full meals and managed to squeeze in an extensive a la carte listing. The least-expensive meal, a hot turkey sandwich, was $1.75, or about $12.50 today. The most expensive meal — a sirloin steak sandwich with onion rings and potatoes — was $2.75, or almost $23 today. On the a la carte section, two lamb chops were $3.25, or about $27 today. A plain hamburger was $1.25, or more than $10 today.

The automat menu was pretty pathetic, and rail advocates claimed it proved that SP was trying to discourage customers. But the reality was that there weren’t that many customers to discourage, as the train sometimes ran with only one coach and the automat car. Even so, the ICC persuaded SP to restore the diner two months after the automat menu below was issued in exchange for running the Sunset only three days a week.

Click image to download a 120-KB PDF of this menu.


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