Great Northern Placemat

While the dining cars of premiere trains such as the Empire Builder and–in its early years, at least–the Western Star used heavy linen tablecloths, secondary trains such as the Red River and Internationals used paper placemats instead. Paper placemats were also used in the Ranch Car and other coffee shop cars on the premiere trains.

Click to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this placemat.

The Great Northern’s placemat is the most colorful I have seen. Most others, like the Northern Pacific Traveller’s Rest placemat, were printed in just two colors.

The above placemats are visible in this image of the Western Star coffee shop-lounge car.


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