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Crater Lake Menu for the Californian

Posted on July 28, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

The Californian was Southern Pacific’s Chicago-Los Angeles economy train, operating from 1936 to 1947 in competition with Union Pacific’s Challenger. This 1938 menu folder is fancier than the ones used on the pre-war Challenger, which were usually just cards. But the prices were economical: lamb chopsweare 30¢ or 55¢ for two, vs. 45¢ and 85¢ on a regular 1938 SP dinner menu. Grilled fish was 50¢ on this menu, 75¢ on the other one.

Click image to download a 600-KB PDF of this menu.

Expensive items such as sirloin steaks were absent from this menu. It also doesn’t have a table d’hôte section, though an insert offered a plate dinner with fish or turkey plus vegetables, bread, dessert, and beverage — no soup or salad — for just 35¢. A similar table d’hôte meal on the regular menu was at least 90¢, though that came with soup and salad. Continue reading →

Southern Pacific Daylight in Color

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

We’ve previously seen a name-train booklet for the first Daylight train. This one is much fancier, with full color illustrations of train interiors and exteriors. It wasn’t unusual for railroads to produce two booklets to introduce new trains, one for VIPs and one for ordinary people; compare, for example, this full-color booklet with this one-color booklet for the 1947 streamlined Empire Builder.

Click image to download a 4.7-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

Neither of the Daylight booklets are dated, but as the train was introduced in 1937 and the illustration’s in today’s booklet are all paintings, not photos, it is likely from 1937 while the other one, which has black-and-white interior photos, might be from that year or a year or so later. Railroads often relied on illustrations from the manufacturer to advertise a train before the train itself was delivered but often used photos after they were avaiable. Continue reading →

Midsummer Night’s Dream Dinner Menu

Posted on July 26, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

Austrian theater and film director Max Reinhardt staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream for five nights at the Hollywood Bowl in September, 1934, and then five nights at the San Francisco Opera House and two nights at UC Berkeley in October. The plays featured many famous stars including James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, and Joe E. Brown.

Click image to download a 691-KB PDF of this menu.

These plays are described on this menu, which otherwise is much like yesterday’s. Unmentioned is the fact that Reinhardt first staged this play on Broadway in New York City in 1927. Curiously, Reinhardt didn’t speak English and had to have a translator for all of his directions. Continue reading →

Rose Festival Dinner Menu

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

This is a flimsy paper menu that wasn’t actually used as a menu but as a come-on to get people to go to the dining car. The menu side says it is a sample menu that illustrates the type of food served in the diner “but not the exact dishes being served today.”

Click image to download a 691-KB PDF of this menu.

I’ve posted one menu like this before, but it didn’t have that disclaimer so I thought it was actually used in a dining car. I have seen one that was marked for a trip of the University of Southern California to Pittsburgh (for a football game?), so apparently sometimes these were used as real menus. Continue reading →

Michel Kady Crater Lake Menu

Posted on July 24, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

Here’s another beautiful painting by Michel Kady on the cover of a Southern Pacific menu. We’ve previously seen five others, all of which can be accessed on the SP menu series page. All of these menus were used for tour groups, in this an American Legion trip from Los Angeles to Portland, where that group was holding its annual convention.

Click image to download a 470-KB PDF of this menu.

Crater Lake is a beautiful place, but you rarely see photos showing the entire lake because the views from the rim are so close to the lake that getting the entire lake in one photo requires either a panoramic camera or an extremely wide angle lens. That shouldn’t be a problem for a painter, and the fact that this painting only shows a part of the lake reveals that Kady never actually went there and instead was painting from a photograph. Continue reading →

The West Coast of Mexico

Posted on July 23, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

“Southern Pacific of Mexico has just completed connection of its lines between Tepic and Guadalajara, opening a route of great importance for commerce and travel from the United States, via Tucson and Njogales, Arizona, through to Mexico City and the interior of Mexico,” reports page 5 this 1927 booklet. That may have been exciting news for U.S. residents who wanted to visit Mexico, but why did SP spend four pages on other stuff before announcing this?

Click image to download a 12.7-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet.

The beautiful cover painting by Maurice Logan, shown above, is actually the back cover. The inside back cover is the usual list of Southern Pacific ticket agents. This not only includes agents in Mexico City and Monterey, Mexico, but also Liverpool, London, Paris, Milan, and Turin, Italy. SP must have thought Europeans would be particularly interested in visiting Mexico. Continue reading →

Scott Lake Postcard

Posted on July 22, 2022 by Train LoverMay 26, 2022

I was attracted to this postcard because I recognized the location. The card says “the Three Sisters from the west,” but it doesn’t mention that the lake in the foreground is Scott Lake, which is more northwest than west of the Three Sisters. Scott Lake is really three lakes strung together by narrow channels; the picture shows the southern-most lake.

Click image to download a 161-KB PDF of this postcard.

About ten years ago, I took the photo below, which looks very similar to the postcard except it was summer instead of winter and more trees have grown up in the foreground. The snow in the postcard makes me wonder how the photographer managed to get to this location in winter. Continue reading →

Yellowstone Through the Gallatin Gateway

Posted on July 21, 2022 by Train LoverJune 13, 2022

The unexpectedly high costs of building its Pacific Coast extension combined with unexpectedly low transcontinental freight business due to the opening of the Panama Canal put the St. Paul Road into receivership in 1925. Among other things, the receiver who was put in charge of reorganizing the railroad, which now styled itself the Milwaukee Road, approved $300,000 — about $10 million in today’s dollars — for the construction of a fine hotel in Salesville, Montana, which was as close as Milwaukee tracks came to Yellowstone National Park.

Click image to download a 14.3-MB PDF of this 52-page booklet. Click here to download a 10.2-MB PDF of the front and back cover.

Salesville was actually several miles away from the railroad’s main line, but the Milwaukee had purchased a local interurban line that connected Bozeman with nearby Salesville. To create a more inviting experience, the railroad convinced the town to rename itself Gallatin Gateway, as the trip from the inn to Yellowstone would be up the Gallatin River canyon. Continue reading →

California Zephyr 1969 Dinner Menus

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

We’ve seen both these menus before, but one of mine was heavily faded from being on display. Though I never let it be in the direct sun, apparently even a little light causes the yellows and reds to disappear. Fortunately, these menus are quite common, probably because they were printed in October 1969 and were left over after the train made its last run in March 1970.

Click image to download a 1.8-MB PDF of this menu.

It was after I rode the last run of the Rio Grande Zephyr, the Denver-Salt Lake portion of the California Zephyr, in 1983, that I started collecting railroad memorabilia. One of the dealers I purchased items from was a man named John White, who operated a store he called Grandpa’s Depot out of the fading Oxford Hotel a block from Denver’s Union Station. Railfans in the 1970s often stayed at that hotel between arriving on Amtrak from Chicago one evening and taking the Rio Grande Zephyr the next morning. Later, White moved his store into Denver’s Union Station before it was rehabilitated. Continue reading →

On the Way Home from the Rose Parade

Posted on July 19, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

The Abington Pennsylvania high school band rode the Rio Grande on January 3 and 4. The menu doesn’t say what year, but it must have been 1962, when the band marched in the Pasadena Rose Parade.

Click image to download a 251-KB PDF of this menu.

The picture at the bottom of this menu card was also used on one of the postcards promoting the California Zephyr. When I presented that card here, I noted that it appeared to be a colorized version of a black-and-white photo. The colors on this menu are more intensely saturated than those on the postcard, a possible indication of colorization rather than a natural color photo. Continue reading →