The Union Pacific seemed to have complete control over the menus of the City of Los Angeles and City of Portland even though these trains also went over the Chicago & North Western (before 1955) and Milwaukee Road (after 1955). … Continue reading
This menu was issued the same day in 1961 as yesterday’s lunch menu. Like the lunch menu, the painting on the cover is by E. Irving Couse and this time depicts a Hopi Indian making an arrow. Click image to … Continue reading
Between 1892 and about 1960, the Santa Fe Railway acquired more than 600 paintings, mostly of the Grand Canyon and Southwest Indians, by scores of fine artists. Beginning in 1907, the railway used many of these paintings on its annual … Continue reading
This 1971 dinner menu was printed for the City of Portland. Appropriately enough, it features a Fogg painting of a train in the Columbia River Gorge. But the railroad in the painting actually precedes the Union Pacific by several decades. … Continue reading
After 1969, the Union Pacific went back to its photo menus for most meals, but–perhaps using up leftover stock–continued to use Fogg menus from time to time. Here is a 1971 lunch menu featuring a painting of a steamboat used … Continue reading
Here’s another breakfast menu featuring a Howard Fogg portrait, this time of two modern freight trains meeting in Utah’s Weber Canyon. As near as I can tell, the menu itself is identical to the one with the Last Spike cover; … Continue reading
Here’s a City of Los Angeles lunch menu featuring the Howard Fogg portrait of a domeliner. Judging from the vegetation in the picture, which looks like Joshua Tree National Monument, the train was probably the City of Los Angeles. Musli … Continue reading
To celebrate the centennial of the joining of the first transcontinental railroad, Union Pacific commissioned sixteen paintings from the then-preeminent railroad painter, Howard Fogg. The paintings ranged historically from the Last Spike ceremony to modern domeliner and freight trains. Click … Continue reading
The inside of this 1958 menu is identical to yesterday’s coffee shop menus, but the cover photo shows a lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Today, we’ll compare it with a City of Portland dome-dining car menu from the same … Continue reading
Here are two coffee shop dinner menus from the City of Portland. While they have different covers, both are dated August, 1958 and have identical meal offerings. Click to download a 2.1-MB PDF of this menu. A comparison with yesterday’s … Continue reading
