1951 City of Portland

This booklet is parallel to yesterday’s for the City of Denver. Is the green cover supposed to be reminiscent of Oregon’s evergreen forests while the City of Denver red cover denotes Colorado’s red rocks? Or was UP just trying to keep the booklets visually distinct?

Click image to download a 4.9-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet.

In any case, this booklet reveals the homogenization of Union Pacific’s streamlined trains. While the 1930s trains featured distinctive cars such as the Frontier Shack on the City of Denver and the Little Nugget car on the City of San Francisco, the dining and lounge cars in this booklet look completely generic. The 1951 City of Portland featured a diner, cafe-lounge for coach passengers, and a rear lounge car for Pullman passengers that presumably had a round tail, though you wouldn’t know it from this booklet. None of these looked like they were particularly designed with a Northwest or other unique theme.


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