The Golden State Limited in 1927

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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As previously mentioned here, in 1926 the Santa Fe introduced the Chief, which went between Chicago and Los Angeles in 63 hours, five hours faster than previous trains. The railroad also charged a $10 extra fare (about $175 in today’s money). Union Pacific and Rock Island-Southern Pacific immediately sped up their premiere Chicago-LA trains and started charging a similar extra fare.

Click image to download a 4.4-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet.

Competing with trains that took the same amount of time and charged the same fare, this booklet attempts to distinguish the Golden State Limited as the train that offered “miles of comfort instead of miles of transportation.” For example, the observation car had a writing desk equipped with “paper, pens, ink, envelopes, telephone, the latest magazines and newspapers,” all helping to make “a trainload of comfort and convenience.” Continue reading →

Illinois Central September 1952 Timetable

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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Most pages of this timetable are nearly identical to those of yesterday’s, which was issued 17 months before. In place of the “vacation I.Q. test” was a blurb about the Panama Limited. The ad didn’t say so, but in 1952 Illinois Central made the Panama even more luxurious by adding two-unit diners that had originally been intended for the C&O Chessie.

Click image to download an 20.9-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

As with yesterday’s timetable, this one devotes all of page 2 to text supposedly written by IC vice president R.E. Barr. This essay brags about how courteous IC employees were and how much they respected passengers and shippers. But passengers met IC personnel throughout their journeys and could judge for themselves how courteous they were. Methinks anyone who has to devote a full-page article bragging to customers about employee courtesy doth protest too much. Continue reading →

Illinois Central April 1950 Timetable

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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“Test your vacation I.Q.” invites the front cover of this timetable (the cover shown below being the back cover). This test, however, was somewhat deceptive.

Click image to download an 18.0-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

“Is Florida too warm for summer vacations?” asks the I.Q. test. “No! Florida is no warmer in summer than the northern states.” What it is, however, is far more humid, making it less desirable for vacations than “the northern states.” Continue reading →

IC’s New Orleans in 1948

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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Here is one more Illinois Central booklet about New Orleans from the Charles Medin collection. While it is possible he helped design this booklet, the only artworks are some borders as most of the booklet is photographs. If he did work on it, it was one of the last things he did before retiring in 1949.

Click image to download a 10.6-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

This booklet claims that the New Orleans of 1948 was both “romantically old” and “vigorously modern.” However, it says very little about what made New Orleans modern other than the port, the Huey P. Long Bridge (which isn’t in New Orleans), and Tulane Stadium (which the booklet called Municipal Stadium). Continue reading →

IC’s New Orleans in 1929

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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There is just enough trompe-l’œil in the cover painting on this booklet that it almost makes me dizzy to look at it. Like yesterday’s, this one is from the collection of Charles Medin, who was a staff artist for Illinois Central. However, he clearly didn’t paint the cover as it is signed A. Fitzpatrick. Although an Art Fitzpatrick worked for the auto industry after 1938, he was only 10 years old when this booklet came out and I can’t find any information about an artist by that name who was working in 1929.

Click image to download a 13.0-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

The booklet’s frontispiece has a drawing signed Wm. Mark Young (1881-1946). Young was born in Alton, studied art at Washington University in St. Louis, and worked as a commercial artist, first in St. Louis, then Chicago, and also for a time in Cleveland. He was known as a muralist and also illustrated books. Continue reading →

The Beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast

Posted on by July 3, 2024
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Just east of New Orleans is the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Like yesterday’s booklet about New Orleans, this is from the collection of Illinois Central staff artist Charles Medin. However, none of the artwork in the booklet is by him.


Click image to download a 9.9-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet. Click here to download a 3.0-MB PDF of the full cover of the booklet.

In addition to the full-color cover, the interior has four spreads of drawings in black and white with a red tint. Two of the drawings are signed “Proehl” with a tiny logo that looks a little like a P and a Y joined together. Proehl would be Paul Proehl (1887-1965), a staff artist for Palenski-Young, a Chicago firm that specialized in advertising art. Continue reading →

Illinois Central’s New Orleans in 1921

Posted on by February 13, 2024
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Due to its climate, New Orleans has long been a popular vacation spot. The city held out against Jim Crow racism for longer than most other parts of the South, which allowed a flowering of artistic expression among its black community. As a result, it was and remains popular for its music, food, and other arts.

Click image to download a 9.8-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

Being the end of the line for Illinois Central’s southern route, the company naturally advertised the city as a vacation destination for people in the cold, wintry North. The text was written in 1914 by William Allen of the New Orleans Convention and Tourist Bureau. This copy is a 1921 reprint, but more than just a reprint, it is updated in several places. Continue reading →

Missouri Pacific March 1952 Timetable

Posted on by February 16, 2024
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Annoyingly, the inside front cover of this timetable says that the Eagles are the “smoothest way West-Southwest.” As I complained a few days ago, except for its line to Pueblo, Missouri Pacific didn’t serve the West or the Southwest, so I find this slogan puzzling.

Click image to download a 25.2-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

Breaking from the city series in the timetables shown here in the last few days, this one dedicates the page before the centerfold map to Louisiana. As we know from timetables shown here previously, later editions covered Nebraska, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and no doubt several states in editions I haven’t seen yet. Continue reading →

Missouri Pacific March 1951 Timetable

Posted on by February 16, 2024
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The inside front cover of this timetable has nice silhouettes of ten sets of MP passenger Diesels and the first car of passenger trains representing the various members of the Eagle “flock.” That includes the St. Louis-Texas Texas Eagle, St. Louis-Pueblo Colorado Eagle, St. Louis-Omaha Missouri River Eagle, Memphis-Tallullah Delta Eagle, and Houston-Brownsville Valley Eagle.

Click image to download a 25.7-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

The page before the centerfold map celebrates “colorful Colorado,” “no. 3 in a series of color pages featuring the states served by Missouri Pacific lines.” “With Pueblo as its western terminus, the Missouri Pacific is one of Colorado’s major transportation systems to and from the east and southeast,” the article pompously brags. In fact, Missouri Pacific was arguable the least important, or at best the second-least important, of five different railroads connecting Colorado with the east and southeast. Continue reading →

Missouri Pacific June 1949 Timetable

Posted on by April 20, 2024
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The inside front cover of this timetable advertises that the Texas Eagles go between St. Louis and Texas “overnight,” allowing for morning arrivals in St. Louis and reasonable arrivals at “most of the principal cities of Texas.” If the principal cities of Texas are Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, then the train served all of them, but it didn’t reach some less-important cities such as El Paso.

Click image to download a 25.3-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

The page before the centerfold map is about El Dorado, the “oil capital of Arkansas.” I had never heard of this city before. Its population peaked in 1960 and has declined by more than 30 percent since then, so the oil boom must be over. I can’t help but think that MP’s articles about cities and states are more to promote their industrial potential than their tourist potential. Continue reading →