Christmas Aboard a Streamliner

Posted on by December 24, 2024
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We’ve seen Thanksgiving menus aboard UP City trains that only offered the traditional roast turkey as an entrée (but otherwise were very elegant). Here is a City of San Francisco Christmas menu that offers a choice of entrées: sole, pork chops, or roast turkey. However, there are fewer appetizers, vegetables, and desserts.

Click image to download a 452-KB PDF of this menu.

The price of the dinner, regardless of entrée, is $1.60, well below the $3.00 and $3.50 prices on the Thanksgiving menus. Looking at other Union Pacific menus, this would have been the right price for 1947, so I’ve dated it to that year. Continue reading →

Transportation Giants Lunch Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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This menu proudly features three of Burlington’s most modern locomotives on its cover. The back cover has a description of each from right to left, instead of the more usual left to right.

Click image to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this menu.

The cover simply calls the right-most locomotive the “Zephyr,” even though, on one hand, there were nine locomotives that shared the slant-nose design and, on the other hand, the left-most locomotive also hauled Zephyr trains. Continue reading →

Scenic Colorado and Utah in 1916

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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We’ve previously seen Burlington booklets about Colorado and Utah from 1922 and 1926. This one is from 1916. Although the cover below (which is the back cover) gives equal billing to Colorado and Utah, it devotes 17 pages exclusively to the former and only three to the latter.

Click image to download a 25.0-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

A lot happened between 1916 and 1922, so it is not surprising that the text had been almost completely rewritten and only a few of the 28 photographs in this booklet were also in the 1922 edition. A subhead proclaiming Colorado’s “mountains – glories – supremacy” had been retained but the subhead describing Utah as “the promised land” in 1916 became “the land of surprises” in 1922. Continue reading →

Great Northern 1929 Breakfast Menu

Posted on by December 22, 2024
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Unlike most menus, this one unfolds twice instead of just once. While we’ve seen a few like this before, this one is even more unusual in that it is printed on both sides.

Click image to download a 2.1-MB PDF of this menu.

On the outside, the waterfall on the front cover isn’t named, but a previous menu showed a similar picture and called it Dawn Mist Falls near the northeast corner of Glacier Park. Regrettably, the picture on this menu cuts off the bottom half of the falls, but it is nonetheless a striking and colorful image. Continue reading →

Railroad Problems in 1906

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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In 1893, James J. Hill completed the first transcontinental railroad built without federal subsidies and then saved that railroad from collapse in what was up to then the worst recession in U.S. history even as railroads all around the Great Northern fell into bankruptcy. This made him into a celebrity, something like the Steve Jobs of his day, and in the 1900s he gave lectures all around the country about railroads, transportation, and soil conservation.

Click image to download an 11.0-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

Many of those lectures were printed in 6″x9″ pamphlets like this one, probably paid for by Hill or the Great Northern and distributed by his publicist and eventual biographer, Joseph Pyle. I have a book binding together 30 or 40 of those lectures, but unfortunately it can’t easily be scanned. Continue reading →

Hiawatha Seasons Greetings Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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The meal offerings in this menu are the most elaborate of any of the dinner menus we have seen from the Milwaukee Road. The only ones that have been comparable are a 1965 lunch menu and another lunch menu from the same year this one was issued.

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu.

That year appears to be 1969, as both this menu and the lunch menu say, “Milwaukee Road Dining Car employees are proud of their special citation for sanitation by Surgeon General U. S. Public Health Service of nine consecutive years.” That citation was given to the railroad in March 1969. However, today’s menu interior has a small drawing of a turkey and the words “Seasons Greetings,” suggesting it is from sometime around Thanksgiving or Christmas of that year. Continue reading →

Super Dome Lounge Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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This is the menu for the lounge that replaced the Tip Tap Grill in 1952. However, it offered only beverages, not sandwiches or other café-type foods. “Your dining car is to the rear of the Super Dome Car,” says a note at the end of the menu, “and we invite you to avail yourself of meal service at the usual times and for sandwich and snack service at all times.”

Click image to download a 670-KB PDF of this menu, which was provided by Brian Leiteritz.

The menu lists C.C. Dilley as the general manager of passenger services. He held this position in 1965, while during the 1950s he was in Milwaukee’s advertising department and in 1962 he was a freight traffic manager. This suggests this menu is from the mid- to late-1960s, which also means it was used on the Hiawatha, not the Olympian Hiawatha, which had already been cancelled by that time.

Hiawatha Silver Anniversary Dinner Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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In 1960, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Hiawatha speedliner, the Milwaukee Road bravely offered meals for the same price they had charged for them in 1935. That means a table d’hôte meal of whitefish, lamb chop, or roast chicken with soup, potatoes, vegetable, bread dessert, and beverage was only 65¢. In 1960 a meal like that would normally cost around $2.

Click image to download a 771-KB PDF of this menu, which was provided by Brian Leiteritz.

The original Hiawatha made its inaugural run on May 29, 1935. It is like this menu was used only on May 29, 1960.

Tip Top Grill Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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In addition to the diner, the 1947 Olympian Hiawatha came with a cafe car called the Tip Top Grill (named after a restaurant in Chicago’s Pullman building). It was replaced in 1952 by a cafe-lounge beneath the train’s Super Domes. The menu credits M.P. Ayars as superintendent of dining car service. He took this job in January 1948, which narrows down the date the timetable only a little.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu, which was provided by Brian Leiteritz.

So this menu is from around 1950 plus or minus a couple of years. An exhortation to “save food — don’t waste” suggests it is from before 1950 when people were still worried about food security. Continue reading →

Olympian Hiawatha Dinner Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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Most of the table d’hôte meals on this menu cost twice as much as they did on yesterday’s Hiawatha menu. Fish, ham, or turkey are $2 each, while a sirloin steak was $3. Yet on the a la carte side “pan fresh fish” was only 5¢ more than on yesterday’s menu.

Click image to download a 3.2-MB PDF of this menu, which was provided by Brian Leiteritz.

Today’s menu is dated November 1947, while I dated yesterday’s to 1946. Inflation between the two years was only about 14 percent, but the railroad was clearly responding to several years of price controls. Between 1942, when such controls were put in place, and late 1947 inflation was about 50 percent. Of course, it is quite likely that the railroad was able to offer larger portions or higher quality dishes in 1947 than the year before, when there were worldwide fears of food shortages.

Click image to download a 410-KB PDF of this envelope, which was provided by Brian Leiteritz.

The bottom of the left side of the menu says, “Steward will furnish an envelope for patron desiring to mail this menu.” Above is an envelope that might have been provided.