Great Northern Score Pad

Long train trips could be boring, so club cars sold playing cards and provided score pads. I’ve already shown a Great Northern bridge score sheet, but this 1959 pad is for bridge, gin rummy, and canasta.

Click to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this score pad.

The score pad has about 50 sheets in it (or had; some of this one have been torn out), each of which has a score sheet for bridge on one side. The other side of half the sheets have canasta scoring while the other half have gin scoring. I’ve scanned a sample of each sheet. The inside covers provide the rules for scoring each game, while the back cover is an ad for Great Northern trains.

As advertised on page 26 of yesterday’s timetable, a deck of cards was 70 cents in 1955 (a little over $6 today), up from 50 cents in 1947 (a little over $5 today; see p. 21 of the 1947 timetable). Both ads mention “New Blackfeet Indian Series,” but feature the same cards with Winold Reiss paintings of Chief Wades in the Water and his wife, Julia Wades in the Water.


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