For the full-page advertisement on the front cover of this timetable, Southern Pacific hired a 23-year-old artist named Norman Todhunter, whose father, Francis Todhunter, was also a commercial artist. Norman later became known as a postage stamp designer who encouraged the Postal Service to print stamps with more than one color.
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For this ad, SP asked Todhunter to draw some passengers on the Californian and/or the San Francisco Challenger. The drawings are somewhat contrived: one shows a man reading a book with the caption, “This gentleman was enthusiastic about the comfort of his tourist berth.” It could just as well read, “This man was sitting up at night because he wasn’t able to fall asleep on a rocking train.”