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Rio Grande May 1954 Timetable

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Train LoverJune 5, 2023

In addition to the color photos on the cover, this timetable makes some interesting if questionable uses of color. The inside front cover pictures two cars from the Prospector and one from the California Zephyr using black-and-white photos but with the Prospector cars colored in orange. Since stainless steel prints almost as grey anyway, this makes the photos look like they are in nearly full color.

Click image to download a 11.3-MB PDF of this timetable contributed by Ellery Goode.

The back cover has an ad for Rio Grande vista-domes picturing the Prospector train and the Colorado Eagle, which went on Rio Grande rails between Pueblo and Denver. The photos are in black-and-white, but a Rio Grande “Main Line Through the Rockies” logo is in yellow and cyan. Continue reading →

Outdoor Life in the Rockies

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Train LoverJune 5, 2023

This 108-page booklet is a combination of advertisement, travel advisor, and along-the-way guide for all of the routes of the Denver & Rio Grande Western in 1925. Although the Moffat Tunnel route was still nearly ten years away, the Rio Grande routes were far more far flung in 1925 than they were a few years later.

Click image to download a 24.7-MB PDF of this booklet.

The booklet opens with a 162-word introduction by Edwin Sabin, a noted travel writer who wrote a longer (500-word) introduction used by the Burlington in a booklet about Colorado and Utah. This was followed by eleven pages of text about the wonders of outdoor life. Most of the rest of the booklet was devoted to descriptions of towns and sights along the railroad. Continue reading →

CB&Q May 1956 Timetable

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Train LoverJune 20, 2023

Issued just six months after yesterday’s condensed timetable, not much changed between the two. As a complete timetable, this one provides more details that were omitted from yesterday’s, but not enough to answer any of the questions raised yesterday, such as how cars on train 15 from Chicago to Omaha made it back to Chicago or why Burlington operated a coach-only train to serve small towns in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the middle of the night.

Click image to download a 24.8-MB PDF of this timetable, which was contributed by Ellery Goode.

The Blackhawk must have been an impressive train in the 1950s. It included three sleeping cars, a diner-lounge, a diner, and coaches between Chicago and the Twin Cities. It also carried one sleeping car and coaches to Seattle via the Mainstreeter; three sleeping cars and a coach from Chicago to Seattle via the Western Star, and one more sleeper to Portland on the Star. That’s at least 13 cars plus at least two more if the twice-used plural “coaches” counts as more than one. Continue reading →

CB&Q November 1955 Condensed Timetable

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Train LoverJune 5, 2023

Burlington’s condensed timetables of the 1950s had ten tables, led by the Chicago-Denver corridor in table 1. This table shows six zephyrs and three other trains: two going as far as Galesville (and continuing on to Kansas City), one as far as Omaha (which returned only as far as Burlington), one as far as Lincoln, and four trains going all the way to Denver. In addition to the Denver Zephyr and California Zephyr, the Denver trains included the Coloradan and unnamed, coach-only trains 7 & 14.

Click image to download a 2.9-MB PDF of this timetable, which was contributed by Ellery Goode.

The Coloradan was a heavyweight train that included a dining-parlor car that only went between Chicago and Lincoln. It also had a sleeping car between Chicago and Lincoln that went on to Great Falls, Montana on train 43 (shown in timetable 4), which started in Kansas City and was once known as the Adventureland. In Great Falls, the train met Great Northern’s Western Star. Train 43 also met the North Coast Limited in Billings, giving people from both Chicago and Kansas City two alternate routes to the Pacific Northwest. Continue reading →

Yellowstone Falls 1938 Lunch Menu

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Train LoverMay 12, 2023

Today’s menu features a painting of Yellowstone Falls glued on the front cover. While it is a pretty painting, the colors don’t look anything like the actual colors of the rocks around Yellowstone Falls, which makes me think the artist was working from a black-and-white photo.

Click image to download a 542-KB PDF of this menu.

That artist was R. (for Robert) Atkinson Fox (1860-1935). Fox specialized in landscape paintings but also did dreamlike paintings reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish. Parrish was ten years younger than Fox but probably preceded him in this style. Continue reading →

Colorado Lake 1939 Lunch Menu

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Train LoverMay 12, 2023

Veterans of the 33rd Division going to the 1938 American Legion convention were served lunch from this menu, which has a photograph of a Colorado lake glued on the cover. Unfortunately, I don’t immediately recognize the lake.

Click image to download a 655-KB PDF of this menu.

Similar to yesterday’s breakfast menu, this one includes No. 1 and No. 2 unpriced lunches. Really, there are six since there are three entrées per lunch and almost everything else is the same except the choice of vegetables (one has peas or carrots and the other has peas and carrots) and desserts. Again, I suspect if someone wanted the veal cutlet from No. 1 and the peach pie from No. 2, the Burlington would have been happy to comply so long as it hadn’t run out of the pie

Burlington 33rd Division 1938 Breakfast Menu

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Train LoverJune 16, 2023

The 33rd Division was the 33rd Infantry Division, formed from the Illinois National Guard in 1917 for service in the Great War. Members of the division received nine Medals of Honor during the war. “Black and gold” refers to the division’s logo, a gold cross on a black circle.

Click image to download a 994-KB PDF of this menu.

The menu says it was used while “Traveling via the Burlington Route enroute to the National Legion Convention, Los Angeles, September 1938.” By “national legion” the menu means national convention of the American Legion, which held its 20th annual convention in Los Angeles on September 19 through 22. Continue reading →

Tonight’s Dinner Special

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Train LoverMay 14, 2023

This came with yesterday’s menu, but yesterday’s was a breakfast menu and this is for dinner, so they were probably collected on the same trip. The paper clip mark at the top of this menu shows that it was once inserted into a menu folder, but that folder has gotten separated.

Click image to download a 3.0-MB PDF of this menu.

The menu is for a “special” table d’hôte dinner with juice, salad, or soup, one of four entrées, potatoes or vegetable, bread, dessert, and beverage. This is clearly a bargain menu as first-class menus usually have both potatoes and a vegetable and both soup and salad. The price was 85¢, which if this is from the same year as yesterday’s breakfast menu is about $15 in today’s money.

Crystal River Breakfast Menu

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Train LoverMay 11, 2023

After the Union Pacific’s post-war color photo menus, the largest series of dining car menus on a U.S. railroad was probably the Rio Grande’s glue-on photo menus, of which I’ve so far found 35. Since the Rio Grande menus are dated in the 1940s, I wonder if they were inspired by Rio Grande’s partner in transcontinental passenger traffic, the Burlington.

Click image to download a 569-KB PDF of this menu.

We’ve previously seen a few Burlington menus with photos or illustrations glued onto the covers, including one with a scene in Glacier National Park and one with a scene in Rocky Mountain National Park. Both of them were breakfast menus dated 1936. Continue reading →

Burlington July 1930 Timetable

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Train LoverMay 16, 2023

Although the Dotsero Cutoff had yet to be built, the first schedule in this timetable showed how to take the Burlington to California via the Rio Grande and Western Pacific. The map accompanying the schedule shows Denver-Pueblo-Salt Lake City in a perfectly straight east-west line even though Pueblo was in fact 120 miles due south of Denver, most of which would be saved when the Dotsero Cutoff opened in a few years.

Click image to download a 24.3-MB PDF of this timetable.

The next pages show routes from Chicago and St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest via Burlington, Northern Pacific, and Great Northern. About a year before this timetable was made, Northern Pacific jumped on the all-Pullman bandwagon by taking coaches and tourist sleepers off the North Coast Limited, timing the coach-and-Pullman Pacific Express to leave Chicago at the same time as the North Coast Limited and adding the Alaskan so there would be two daily coach trains. With the Yellowstone Comet (which only went as far west as Yellowstone), NP had four daily trains heading west at least as far as Montana while Great Northern still had only two, the Empire Builder and Oriental Limited. Continue reading →