This menu is 16 pages long, but only the centerfold has the actual menu. Ten pages are dedicated to pictures and little poems parents could use to entertain their children. The inside front and inside back covers credit the poems and the menu to the “Sleeping & Dining Car Department,” a message so important it had to be repeated.

Click image to download a 2.4-MB PDF of this menu.

The menu itself offers four meals each for breakfast, dinner, and tea. Prices range from 35¢ (US$4.60 in today’s money) for a boiled egg, a slice of bread and butter, a sliced orange, and milk or cocoa for tea to 85¢ (US$11.25 today) for soup, fish, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, fruit salad or pudding, and milk or cocoa for dinner. While most of the meals came with milk or cocoa, just one came with malted milk.

We’ve already seen a 1946 children’s menu with artwork similar to this one but with fewer poems and more choices per meal (now labeled breakfast, dinner, and supper). Plus we’ve seen a cute, die-cut 1948 children’s menu whose artwork was very different, being based on bears rather than children, but which also had some short poems and five choices per meal.