Post-War Northern Pacific Blotters

These blotters, the first three of which are from the Dale Hastin collection, are undated but by their context I presume they are from the post-war period. The first one says that the Great Big Baked Potato “is now restored for your delight on dining cars of the North Coast Limited.” I assume the big potatoes were removed from the menu due to war restrictions, so this blotter must have been from shortly after the war.


Click the image of any blotter to download a PDF of that blotter. Blotter PDFs average about 0.5-MB in size.

Note that, as in the case of the Union Pacific’s bears, the post-war versions were cuter and cuddlier than the prewar versions, which tended to have more prominent teeth.

This blotter uses the same cuddly bear to again advertise the Great Big Baked Potato. Neither blotter describes the North Coast Limited as streamlined, so they would probably be from 1946 to 1947.

The bear is much smaller in this blotter, but it advertises the North Coast Limited as streamlined, so it is probably from 1948 or shortly thereafter.

This blotter that I found on eBay advertises the “faster North Coast Limited. NP speeded up the train in 1952, so I presume the blotter dates from that year.

Here’s the very same blotter but in a slightly different color and with a Dallas address and phone number instead of Minneapolis.


Leave a Reply