Not as colorful as yesterday’s blotters, these provide examples of the variety of blotters GN used to advertise its premiere train in 1925. The first one shows the train pulled by a P2, 4-8-2 locomotive by Mt. Index in the … Continue reading
Here are some pretty blotters that GN used to advertise the Oriental Limited in 1925. Green blotters show the interior of a section sleeper while tan blotters show the train’s dining car. Otherwise, the blotters have different text and some … Continue reading
After the introduction of the Empire Builder in 1929, the Oriental Limited became the Great Northern’s secondary transcontinental train. Until then, the secondary train was called the Glacier Park Limited. This 1924 blotter (an identical one was issued in 1925) … Continue reading
The 1924 Oriental Limited left Chicago at 11 pm and arrived in Seattle or Portland at 7 pm. This blotter doesn’t say how many days the journey required, but travelers departing Monday night wouldn’t arrive until Thursday evening, meaning the … Continue reading
These 1924 blotters all advertise the new Oriental Limited as a route to California. The first is aimed at Chicago residents, who would only take the GN on their way to California–a route that would add one to two full … Continue reading
Most of these blotters are from the Minnesota History Center where they are carefully filed by date in the Great Northern Advertising and Publicity Department‘s files. Those files go back as far as 1924, which also happened to be when … Continue reading
Here are four more blotters from the Dale Hastin collection. Only one is dated, but all have the “Union Pacific System” logo which dates from 1914 through 1932. Click image to download a 0.5-MB PDF of this blotter. The first … Continue reading
Dale Hastin of Denver, Colorado collects rail memorabilia and especially blotters. She offered to let me post items from her collection of blotters, so during a recent visit to Colorado I scanned many of the blotters that related to passenger … Continue reading
Dated January, 1947, this blotter advertises the streamlined Empire Builder, which didn’t begin service until February 7 of that year. Of course, GN had used the locomotives shown in the picture since their delivery in 1945, so the picture didn’t … Continue reading
Here’s what appears to be another prewar blotter advertising Great Northern’s premiere train. Where the last one had contact information for agents in Seattle and Vancouver, this one is for Fargo. Did they have separate blotters for every city on … Continue reading
