The tracks that the Puffing Billy operated on passed in front of George Stephenson’s boyhood home, which still exists as a national historic site. I bicycled by this house once and took a tour before enjoying hot chocolate and scones. Known today as the father of railways for his many inventions, Stephenson was 32 years old when Puffing Billy was built and no longer lived in that house, but it is said that he was influenced by it when he designed his own locomotives in the 1820s.

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu or click here to view and download a 6.0-MB PDF of the menu from the Chung collection.

George Stephenson’s son, Robert, was also a railway engineer, and he designed — probably with the help of his father — the 1829 Rocket, which Canadian Pacific featured on today’s empress menu cover. Unlike the Puffing Billy, the Rocket could go 20 miles per hour, and in fact was clocked at 30 miles per hour traveling light.

The Puffing Billy passes by George Stephenson’s boyhood home in this scene imagined by artist Rob Embleton.

The Rocket was the first locomotive built in Britain with a multi-tube boiler, the first 0-2-2 locomotive, and one of the first with the pistons connected directly to the drivers. Stephenson had designed it to enter into a competition sponsored by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and the Rocket easily won the £500 pound prize (about $84,000 in today’s U.S. dollars). Like the Puffing Billy, the locomotive operated until 1862, after which it was preserved in the London Science Museum. However, in 2019 it was moved to the National Railway Museum in York.

Today’s menu was used on the Empress of Canada on August 8, 1963. It presents the usual multi-course meal including roast turkey for releve. I found this menu in the Chung collection but didn’t like they way they had laid out the PDF, so made my own PDF; you can take your choice of which one to use above.