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Canadian Pacific Resorts in the Rockies

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 29, 2023

This beautiful cover is a blatant example of bait and switch as the inside of this booklet says almost nothing about resorts in the Rockies. The inside front cover lists 13 Canadian Pacific hotels, only three of which were in the Rockies, and 11 bungalow camps, three of which were not in the Rockies, but doesn’t say anything about any of them in particular.

Click image to download an 3.9-MB PDF of this 8-page booklet.

The next four pages are timetables for CP’s transcontinental trains: the Trans-Canada Limited, the Imperial, the Vancouver/Toronto Express, and the Mountaineer. The inside back cover describes Canadian Pacific steamships on the Great Lakes and to Alaska. Only the back cover, which has six black-and-white photographs taken around Banff and Lake Louise, comes close to living up to the promise made by the front cover title. Continue reading →

Legends of the St. Lawrence with Cover

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Train LoverDecember 3, 2023

We saw this colorful booklet with text by Katherine Hale and paintings by Charles Walter Simpson here a couple of years ago. Since I try not to post incomplete items, I was disappointed to realize that the copy I had was missing its cover, something I should have realized from the incomplete map on the back page.

Click image to download an 23.3-MB PDF of this 52-page booklet.

Here is the booklet with its cover, whose front and back paintings are also by Charles Simpson. The inside front cover is blank and the inside back cover has the missing piece of the map. There’s really not much more to say about the booklet that I didn’t say before.

Dieselization of the SP&S

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Train LoverDecember 31, 2023

Several years ago, I presented a painting of an SP&S E-7 locomotive prepared by General Motors design staff. I noted that the locomotive wasn’t actually delivered in those colors; instead, it was painted in the Great Northern Empire Builder colors. I’ve since learned that I was wrong; it didn’t receive the Empire Builder paint job until 1951.

Click image to download a 5.0-MB PDF of this paint diagram. Click here to download a 2.5-MB JPG of this paint diagram.

The above paint diagram, which is dated May 18, 1948, is from General Motors files and I am grateful to Joe Molinari for contributing a copy to Streamliner Memories. While this doesn’t absolutely prove that the locomotive was painted in those colors when it was delivered to the SP&S in 1948, photographic evidence below shows that it was. Continue reading →

The Land of Opportunity Now

Posted on December 30, 2023 by Train LoverDecember 24, 2023

This curiously titled booklet “is the first of a series to be issued jointly by the Burlington, Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways,” says the introduction, “giving authoritative information about the Pacific Northwest.” We’ve previously seen several others in the series, including Western Gateway to World Trade, Treasure Lands of the Pacific Northwest, Timber Billions of the Pacific Northwest, and–perhaps the most popular one–Through the American Wonderland.

Click image to download a 9.3-MB PDF of this 44-page booklet.

It is always amusing to see what people mean by terms like “Northwest” and “Pacific Northwest.” I usually think of the former as Idaho, Oregon, and Washington while the latter is just Oregon and Washington. But an Oregon State University book, Atlas of the Pacific Northwest, includes Idaho while Minnesota media seem to think that state belongs in the Northwest. Continue reading →

Great Northern June 1951 Timetable

Posted on December 29, 2023 by Train LoverDecember 24, 2023

This timetable introduces two new trains: the Mid-Century Empire Builder, which used completely new equipment, and the Western Star, which was a new name for the equipment from the 1947 streamlined Empire Builder. It is hard to know which was bigger news: that the Great Northern had completely re-equipped its premiere train or that it now had two streamliners each as good as or better than the Milwaukee Road’s Olympian Hiawatha and both better than Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited.

Click image to download a 28.6-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable.

The back cover ad on this timetable closely resembles one of the panels on a 1953 brochure advertising Two Great Trains. Some passengers might have been puzzled that the back cover ad calls the Empire Builder “new” when it was an old name while it doesn’t apply that word to the Western Star, which was an entirely new name. Continue reading →

Great Northern October 1949 Timetable

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Train LoverDecember 24, 2023

This timetable was published nine months after the January timetable shown here three months ago and has the same front cover. When writing the today’s post, I was embarrassed to discover that the cover of the PDF for that one was misaligned; I’ve fixed it.

Click image to download a 28.3-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable.

While the back cover of the January timetable advertised Glacier National Park, this edition offers the slogan, “East or West, Great Northern’s Best.” This could mean either that GN’s east- and westbound trains were the best it had to offer or that GN was the best way to go east or west. Of course, the second meaning was the one the marketing department had in mind but I’m sure they didn’t mind that there was a double meaning.

Montana Mountain Resorts

Posted on December 27, 2023 by Train LoverOctober 27, 2023

We’ve previously seen Great Northern booklets advertising dude ranches from 1939, 1940, 1949, and 1950. This one appears to be from 1927 and is the nicest of the lot.

Click image to download a 13.1-MB PDF of this 44-page booklet.

The cover art is signed Cameron Booth (1892-1980), who later became known as the Dean of Montana painters. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Booth’s family moved to Minnesota in time for him to go to high school in Moorhead, across the river from Fargo. Upon graduation, he went to the Art Institute of Chicago, where his artistic skills were recognized by the award of a “traveling fellowship,” $425 (more than $10,000 in today’s money) to study art in Europe. Continue reading →

Iceberg Lake Lunch Menu

Posted on December 26, 2023 by Train LoverOctober 27, 2023

Here’s a menu that was used in the Glacier Park Hotel on Tuesday, August 3. The menu doesn’t state what year it was used, but August 3 fell on a Tuesday in 1915, 1920, 1926, 1932, and 1937. The Glacier Park Hotel didn’t exist before 1910 and I doubt the menu is from the post-war era, so it must be from one of those years.

Click image to download an 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

The photograph of Iceberg Lake says “Photo by Hileman.” That would be Tomar Jacob Hileman (1882-1945), who was born in Pennsylvania but moved to Kalispell, Montana in 1911. He clearly loved Glacier Park as he and Alice Georgeson were the first couple to marry in the park. Continue reading →

Season’s Greetings Blotter

Posted on December 25, 2023 by Train LoverOctober 15, 2023

A century ago today, Great Northern wished its customers “a joyous Christmas and a happy and successful New Year” with this blotter. After a minor post-war recession, the United States had enjoyed rapid economic growth in 1923, and that growth would continue, of course, until 1930.

Click image to download a 789-KB PDF of this blotter from the Minnesota History Center.

That prosperity was not shared by America’s passenger railroads. Passenger-miles had grown in 1923, but declined in every year after that until 1934. Most of this decline was due to automobiles replacing trains for short trips. Long-distance passenger trains such as the Oriental Limited didn’t suffer as much, which probably made Great Northern’s investment in new equipment in 1924 worthwhile. Continue reading →

Adventure Journey on the Railbelt

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Train LoverNovember 14, 2023

In 1956, the Alaska Railroad still had trains called the Aurora (now spelled AuRoRa to emphasize the railroad’s initials) and Midnight Sun, but they operated on very different schedules than in 1931. In the earlier year, both trains went from Seward to Fairbanks on the same schedules but different days of the week and seasons of the year. In 1956, the trains went from Anchorage to Fairbanks with the Midnight Special, appropriately enough, going overnight while the AuRoRa was the day train. Mixed trains to Seward were nameless, suggesting most tourists were arriving by air rather than steamship.

Click image to download a 2.2-MB PDF of this brochure.

Trains no longer spent the night in Curry, but this brochure still promoted the Curry Hotel as being in “one of the most scenic spots on the Alaska Railroad.” In fact, while it was less expensive than the McKinley Hotel, it was nowhere near as scenic and anyone who stopped was probably disappointed that they didn’t instead spend another day in the park. The hotel burned to the ground in 1957 and was not rebuilt. Continue reading →