According to Wikipedia, “Puffing Billy is the world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive,” having been built in 1813. The back of this menu notes that, “In the early days of railways, . . . a rate of twenty miles an hour seemed progress indeed.” However, Puffing Billy, which replaced horses for hauling coal, could only go about 5 mph.

Click image to download a 563-KB PDF of this menu.

When built, the engine was too heavy for its tracks, which were iron plates rather than rails, so the builder, William Hedley, added two more axles to distribute the weight. When the plates were replaced with rails in around 1830, the extra axles were removed. The locomotive had a remarkably long life, working until 1862. It now resides in the London Science Museum. Continue reading →

In about 1961 Canadian Pacific began using a series of menus featuring historic transportation technologies. Today’s menu shows an artist’s conception of a flying machine designed by Leonardo daVinci in about 1486.

Click image to download a 500-KB PDF of this menu.

To make the machine fly, the back of the menu notes, the operator would have to work both arms and legs to make the wings flap. “The contrast with Canadian Pacific Airlines is extreme,” comments the menu. “Comfort and serenity are our speciality,” it adds, thus undermining its own ocean liner system. Continue reading →

I’ve previously noted that ocean liner operations alleviated boredom by using any possible excuse for a party, and when there were no excuses, they had a party anyway. Each trans-Atlantic crossing on Canadian Pacific steamships had at least one gala dinner, with possibly more festive music than usual and opportunities for dancing. At a time when people normally dressed up for travel anyway, passengers were expected to dress up even fancier than other nights, with tuxedos if possible and at least suits and ties for the men and ball gowns for the women.

Click image to view and download a 2.5-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

This 1960 menu from the Chung collection has a die-cut front, so that the dark grey above the balloons and funnel is actually on page 3. The cover was painted by the mysterious Lendon, about whom I can find no information. Continue reading →

The last menu presented yesterday was from an Empress of Australia voyage that left Liverpool on June 30 and arrived in Montreal on July 8. Today we have four more lunch menus from that same trip, presented in the order in which they were used on the empress.

Click image to view and download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

The first menu shows the White Horse pub, which is located in the rural community of Hedgerley, about 30 miles from inner London. The pub is still in business, though some pages of their web site still contain lorem ipsum text, suggesting they need to pay a little more attention to details. Continue reading →

From about 1953 through at least 1961, Canadian Pacific issued several series of menus for its first-class empress passengers. One of the first, if not the first, was one featuring color illustrations of British royal palaces, usually with a servant or other commoner in the foreground. We’ve already seen ones with Balmoral Castle, Holyrood House, and Windsor Castle.

Click image to view and download a 1.9-MB PDF of this menu from the Chung collection.

Today we have a 1953 dinner menu with Sandringham House, a gigantic mansion built on a 20,000-acre estate in Norfolk, England. The palace has been used as a vacation residence for the royal family for several generations. King George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s father, was both born and died there. The house is surrounded by 60 acres of carefully tended gardens, as illustrated by the gardener on the cover of this menu. Continue reading →