The premise of this brochure is that the Louisville & Nashville route from the Midwest to New Orleans is the most scenic route because it follows “the beautiful Gulf Coast.” The alternative would have been to follow the Mississippi River via Memphis and Jackson on an Illinois Central train.

Click image to download a 7.0-MB PDF of this brochure from the David Rumsey collection.

L&N’s argument was weakened by the fact that its premiere train, the Pan-American, followed the Gulf Coast portion of its route at night. The secondary train, the Azalea, went during daylight, but the only portion of the Gulf Coast it followed was from Mobile to New Orleans, a trip of under four hours.

L&N’s route connected Cincinnati with New Orleans, but to compete with Illinois Central its trains connected with cars from Chicago at Nashville. “The Azalean carries a Chicago-New Orleans lounge car between Nashville and New Orleans,” the brochure helpfully says — which makes it sound like coach and sleeping car passengers would have to change trains but lounge car passengers would not.

One side of this brochure is a large map of the L&N from the perspective of someone who is 30,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. This makes the Gulf Coast portion of the route appear dominant when in fact it is just a minor portion of the trip from the Midwest.

This Poole Brothers map is dated 1926, which led the Rumsey Collection (which is mainly interested in maps) to date the entire brochure 1926. In fact, a smaller map in the brochure is dated 1940, which is most likely when the brochure was issued.