We’ve seen Thanksgiving menus aboard UP City trains that only offered the traditional roast turkey as an entrée (but otherwise were very elegant). Here is a City of San Francisco Christmas menu that offers a choice of entrées: sole, pork chops, or roast turkey. However, there are fewer appetizers, vegetables, and desserts.

Click image to download a 452-KB PDF of this menu.

The price of the dinner, regardless of entrée, is $1.60, well below the $3.00 and $3.50 prices on the Thanksgiving menus. Looking at other Union Pacific menus, this would have been the right price for 1947, so I’ve dated it to that year.

Click image to download a 280-KB PDF of this menu.

Here’s a Christmas menu that’s more like the Thanksgiving menus. In fact, it’s almost exactly like the Thanksgiving menus except there is only one appetizer course instead of two. I doubt anyone missed the absent course, which was a choice of green olives or celery.

The price on this menu is $3.00, which by my previous reckoning would mean it was from 1952. The fine print says “9&10, 105&106.” Trains 9 & 10 were the City of St. Louis while 105 & 106 were the City of Portland.

It is worth noting that, except for the first two lines, this entire menu (along with the Thanksgiving menus) is printed in the Coronet typeface. This is the same typeface used for headings (such as “Dinner” or “A La Carte”) on some Union Pacific and Burlington menus. I think of it as the I Love Lucy typeface because it was used for the opening credits on that show.