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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 →

Barley

Posted on July 18, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

This is the 33rd menu I’ve identified in the series of Rio Grande menus with color photos glued onto the front covers. It is far from the most interesting menu in the series but all new menus are interesting as they help to answer questions about railroad marketing and design.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu.

Barley can be grown at altitudes over 7,500 feet, the back of this menu informs us, and nearly 10 percent of all barley in the country is grown in Colorado and Utah. (Today it is closer to 5 percent, with over half being grown in Idaho and Montana.) Barley, of course, is used for brewing beer, and we can’t help but wonder how much of the barley shown in the photo made its way to the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado. Continue reading →

Wild Rose & Lupin Dinner Menu

Posted on July 17, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

We’ve seen this menu cover before, but it was from a blank menu so I posted just a JPEG of the cover. Today’s is a complete menu dated October, 1969. As I’ve noted before, the Budd Company, which built the Denver Zephyr, hired Kathryn Fligg, a recent graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to create 115 wildflower paintings that were framed and posted in the train’s bedrooms.

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

The Burlington used eight of these paintings on its menu covers. Each menu also has one of the eight paintings on the back cover, in this case, a painting of buttercup, anemone, and fringed gentian. The menu that had that painting on the front cover had this painting of wild rose and lupin on the back. Continue reading →

Jack Frost by John McCutcheon

Posted on July 16, 2022 by Train LoverJune 9, 2022

When I first saw this cover on a 1950 menu, I thought it was very pretty, but I couldn’t afford it. The railroad must have had some extra stock left over when it printed this menu for a Burlington Route Veterans Association annual banquet in 1965.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu.

The cover painting is signed “McCutcheon,” which refers to John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949). Born in Indiana and educated at Purdue, he was the editorial cartoonist at the Chicago Morning News from 1889 to 1903. He then moved to the Chicago Tribune in 1903, where his cartoons appeared not on the editorial page but the front page for forty years. Having won a Pulitzer Prize for one of his cartoons in 1931, he became known as the dean of American cartoonists. Continue reading →

An Old and Well-Founded Saying

Posted on July 15, 2022 by Train LoverJune 21, 2022

In the immediate post-war years, Burlington issued menus featuring scenes from Glacier and Rocky Mountain national parks as well as other scenic areas along its route. This photo of Yellowstone Falls on this one seems to be accompanied by a drunken bear, or possibly an overweight wolf.

Click image to download a 768-KB PDF of this menu.

Burlington’s closest approach to Yellowstone was Cody, Wyoming, so it promoted the “Cody road” which opened in 1903. “It is an old and well-founded saying that ‘If you don’t see the Cody Road, you don’t see Yellowstone,'” claims the back of this menu. Obviously, that “saying” wasn’t any older than 1903, and since 84 miles of the Cody road is entirely outside of the park, it is hardly well-founded. Continue reading →

Cartoon Map Menu

Posted on July 14, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

The cover of this menu is decorated with a “Cartoon Map depicting one man’s gay (if slightly inaccurate) impressions of a Summer Vacation Trip through the great playgrounds served by The Burlington.” The “cartoon map” seems to be signed “Rendoll” or possible “Rendow,” but I can’t find any record of a comic artist by either name.

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

The map depicts several CB&Q trains, including the Pioneer Zephyr, Denver Zephyr, Twin Zephyrs, Mark Twin Zephyr, and Ozark State Zephyr. The latter train only existed from 1936 to 1939, so this undated menu must have been issued during that time period. Continue reading →

Yellowstone in 1967

Posted on July 13, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

The tour described in this brochure from the NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection is different from the ones in shown in the last two days, mainly by including a trip to the Grand Tetons. The basic tour starts in Livingston and includes four nights in the park at the Mammoth Inn, Old Faithful Inn, Jackson Lake Lodge in the Tetons, and Lake Hotel back in Yellowstone.

Click image to download a 1.7-MB PDF of this brochure.

From there, travelers had a choice of returning via Gardiner to Livingston, going over the Beartooth Pass Highway to Red Lodge and Billings, or going via Cody to Billings. Those going to Livingston would spend a night at the Murray Hotel while those going to Billings would stay at the Northern Hotel. The Murray was built in 1904 as a two-story hotel, later expanded to four stories, across the street from NP’s Livingston station. Continue reading →

Yellowstone in 1966

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

This brochure, from the NRPHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection, advertises the same three-day tours through Yellowstone that were listed in yesterday’s: one for westbound travelers that went through Cody and one for eastbound travelers that went through Red Lodge. Due to inflation, the westbound tour price increased to $84.04 while the eastbound tour (which spent one extra night in a hotel) was $101.24. In today’s dollars, that means the westbound price increased from $735 to $750 while the eastbound price remained about $900. These prices including transportation, lodging, and meals in the park, but some meals outside the park were “on your own.”

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

The westbound tour spent two nights at the Lake Hotel and one at Mammoth. The eastbound tour spent one night each at the Mammoth Hotel, Lake Hotel, and Old Faithful Inn and a final night at the Northern Hotel in Billings. The Northern Hotel opened in 1904 as a three-story hotel (later increased to four stories), but after a fire destroyed it in 1940, it was replaced with a modern ten-story building. It advertises itself today as providing “unpretentious, historic luxury.”

Yellowstone in 1964

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

By 1964, Northern Pacific had gone from issuing 68-page booklets about Yellowstone to four-page brochures. Even the NP brochures about Yellowstone in the 1920s and 1938s were more than twice as big as this when unfolded. At a time when almost all other railroads lavishly used color photos to illustrate the regions they served, this brochure relied exclusively on black-and-white photos (or, to be precise, sepia-and-white). This is characteristic of Northern Pacific marketing, which rarely used color photos.

Click image to download a 1.7-MB PDF of this brochure.

This brochure from the NRPHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection specifically encourages passengers going to the Northwest to take a side trip to Yellowstone by getting off the North Coast Limited at Billings, taking a sightseeing bus to Cody and into Yellowstone, spending three nights in the park, and then rebounding the North Coast Limited in Livingston. This tour cost $78.65 in 1964, which is close to $750 in today’s money. Continue reading →

North Coast Limited Ticket Envelopes

Posted on July 10, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

Here are some pretty envelopes that I photographed at the Minnesota History Center. The first one features an illustration of a North Coast Limited vista-dome that we have previously seen on 1960-1963 timetables and a 1969 booklet. The envelope was printed in March 1958.

Click image to download a 297-KB PDF of this brochure.

The second one shows North Coast Limited observation car #390 with a vista-dome in the background. As I’ve noted before, only one North Coast Limited observation car was painted with the broad stripe shown in the illustration; all of the rest just had a pin stripe around the tail of the train. Apparently, NP officials took one look at the broad stripe and decided against painting any other cars that way. Continue reading →