We’ve previously seen a 1958 brochure advertising Great Northern’s dome-laden Empire Builder. This undated brochure is similar but from a year or two earlier. The two share many of the same photos and graphics, but the covers are completely different, the later one being much more attractive.

Click image to download a 3.0-MB PDF of this brochure.

Great Northern also issued at least two brochures for the Western Star: a 1956 edition with a boring front cover and a 1964 edition with a much more attractive front cover. While the abstract cover on the 1956 Western Star brochure is not very eye catching, the cover on today’s Empire Builder brochure is downright creepy, with an ominous silhouette of a locomotive looking like it’s about to pounce on its victim in a darkened alley.

The photos on the back of today’s brochure seem dull and lifeless, while the very same photos on the 1958 edition are crisp with colors that pop out at you. A careful look at the photos reveals that the interior views of dome case in today’s brochure show box cars, trees, and buildings outside while, for the 1958 edition, these had been replaced by scenes of mountains in Glacier National Park. Whoever made those edits also made sure that the photos were printed at their optimal saturations and exposures in the 1958 brochure.

While undated, this brochure was probably first issued in 1956, which is the year Great Northern added full-length domes to the Empire Builder. However, it came with several other brochures dated 1957, one of which I’ll present tomorrow, so to be conservative I’m dating it 1957.