City of Portland Coffee Shop Dinner Menus

Here are two coffee shop dinner menus from the City of Portland. While they have different covers, both are dated August, 1958 and have identical meal offerings.

Click to download a 2.1-MB PDF of this menu.

A comparison with yesterday’s City of Los Angeles menu reveals a few differences between the two trains. The table d’hôte items are the same, while the sandwich offerings are a little different. The “special steak dinner” that is inserted as a flyer into the COLA menu is incorporated directly into the City of Portland menu–perhaps Union Pacific decided that making it a flyer would make it seem “extra special.”

Click to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu.

The big difference is in the fountain selections–or lack of them–on the City of Portland menus: although ice cream sundaes were listed, milk shakes, malts, and ice cream cones weren’t available for Portland passengers. Did Union Pacific remodel its coffee shop cars between 1958 and 1959 (when the COLA menus were issued)? Or did it give the Los Angeles train a slightly better equipped car that allowed it to offer more items to California passengers? We’ll know when we can find some 1959 City of Portland or 1958 City of Los Angeles coffee shop menus.


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