Year-Round Travel Guide

This 1953 brochure unfolds to 20″x27″ of text and graphics that are almost too busy. While one side describes destinations ranging from Mt. Hood to Washington, DC, the other side shows accommodations and fares on New York Central and connecting trains and briefly describes eighteen NYC trains.

Click image to download a 9.3-MB PDF of this brochure.

The destination side of the brochure offers “FREE Rail Travel Extras,” including a side trip to Niagara Falls, or–even more exciting–a side trip to Pittsburgh; a choice of four routes between New York and Chicago (via Cleveland over NYC’s main line, via Ann Arbor through Michigan, via Cincinnati and Indianapolis, or via Marion and Indianapolis); travel one way on NYC and return on B&O or PRR; not to mention numerous routes west of Chicago.

The accommodations side of the brochure lists “easy-on-your-pocket coach fares,” such as a round-trip fare from New York to San Francisco for $142.40, which is slightly more than $1,000 today. Since roundtrip coach airfares today start around $400, trains weren’t as “easy-on-your-pocket” as the railroads wanted people to believe.


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