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To Add to the Interest of Your Trip

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

This booklet, which is from the NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection, is dated August 1955. NP probably reissued a similar booklet with minor updates every year in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but this was one of the first if not the first to feature a vista-dome car on the cover. The booklet covers St. Paul to Seattle, including both the Butte and Helena lines, and also presents Pasco to Portland on the Spokane, Portland & Seattle.

Click image to download a 6.8-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

Sidebars briefly describe Yellowstone Park, a brief history of the Northern Pacific, the 1,486 miles of rivers followed by the North Coast Limited, and the 28 mountain ranges visible from Northern Pacific passenger trains. The Yellowstone sidebar has a photo of a Yellowstone tour bus going under the Roosevelt Arch, which was designed by Robert Reamer, who also designed Old Faithful Inn (which had been funded by the NP) and NP’s Gardiner Depot.

New Yellowstone Bus Service

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Train LoverJuly 8, 2022

“Beginning June 20, 1949, the Northern Pacific will inaugurate new sightseeing bus service for Yellowstone Park travelers,” says this booklet, “to better reveal to them the majestic and inspiring mountain views between Livingston, Montana and the Gardiner Gateway.” Sadly, this was another way of saying that Northern Pacific had discontinued running trains from Livingston to Gardiner at the end of the tourist season in 1948.

Click image to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this 8-page booklet.

The railroad had carried passengers on trains to the entrance of Yellowstone Park since 1902, but apparently after the war it decided buses were less expensive for the number of its customers going to the park. It still ran a few trains for large tour groups, but even that ended in 1955. Continue reading →

Summer Holidays in 1949

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

This post-war booklet briefly describes 22 escorted tours and 36 independent tours people could take of the West. Most of the tours used more than one railroad but so long as they used the Northern Pacific for part of their distance they were included on the list. Burlington Escorted Tours, which published annual booklets of tours before the war, was apparently no longer in business, but the escorted tours listed in this booklet were “under able management and leadership of responsible, long-established tour companies recommended by Northern Pacific Railway.”

Click image to download a 3.2-MB PDF of this 8-page booklet.

The booklet claims that it offers “your choice of 157 escorted tours,” but only describes 22. Each of the tours departed Chicago about once a week, so 157 represented 22 tours departing between 7 and 8 times per summer. Nearly all tours went to Yellowstone with many also going to Alaska, California, the Canadian Rockies (Banff or Jasper), Colorado, or the Pacific Northwest. Continue reading →

North Coast Limited Luggage Sticker

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Train LoverJuly 6, 2022

Here’s an attractive luggage sticker I found at the Minnesota History Center. The colorful sticker uses the NP monad logo to simultaneously show a two-toned green train traveling through Northwest forests and present the railroad’s “Main Street of the Northwest” slogan.

Click image to download a 9.5-MB PDF of this on-board stationery.

NP introduced the streamlined North Coast Limited in stages beginning in 1948. While it wasn’t fully streamlined for several more years, that fact was ignored in railroad advertising. While this particular sticker may have been printed later, it was probably first introduced in 1948.

West Via the Streamlined North Coast Limited

Posted on July 5, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

Printed in green ink with red highlights, this booklet describes the “West” as it might be defined by someone from Chicago: everything west of the Wisconsin-Minnesota line. Mostly it is the Northwest, meaning the northern tier of states west of and including Minnesota. But it also includes a page on “California via the Pacific Northwest.”

Click image to download a 10.1-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

The booklet prominently mentions the streamlined North Coast Limited, which was introduced in 1948. The interior pictures of the train are all drawings, not photographs, suggesting the booklet may have come out around the time that train was introduced, before the NP was able to take its own interior photos. There is one exterior photo of the entire train, but several of the cars in the photo are clearly heavyweights, so it was probably taken before 1948. So, while it could be from a year or three later, I’ll date it to 1948.

Rainier National Park in 1939

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

People taking the Northern Pacific to or from the Golden Gate International Exposition would probably want to take at least a day or two to stop at Mount Rainier along the way. This booklet shows them what they might see in the park and how to get there by bus from Tacoma for $9 or Seattle for $10.50 round trip. In today’s dollars, that would be $190/$220, which is pretty expensive for a 200-mile bus trip.

Click image to download a 6.3-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

Northern Pacific appears to have printed this entire booklet using just green and red inks. The green is light enough that it shows up when it needs to, as in a tree or a field, but dark enough that it doesn’t make faces too ghastly looking. NP artists went to some effort to print five photos using both green and red, almost giving the impression of being full-color photos. Continue reading →

Take the NP Route to the Golden Gate Expo

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

This booklet, which is courtesy of the NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection, was prepared by Golden Gate International Exposition commission and shared with the Northern Pacific and other railroads with two blank pages for the railroads to use to advertise their trains. We’ve previously seen the same booklet in a Milwaukee Road edition. Other than the railroad logos on the back covers (shown below), the only information unique to each railroad’s edition is on pages 20 and 21.

Click image to download a 8.4-MB PDF of this 24-page booklet.

For people living near the NP west of Minneapolis-St. Paul, taking the Northern Pacific (or Milwaukee) might have been the best way to get to San Francisco. It would have been harder to entice people in or east of the Twin Cities. Where the Milwaukee Road emphasized the comforts of its trains, NP’s approach was to focus on scenery and access to Yellowstone, Rainier, and Olympic parks as attractions people could enjoy “if time permits.”

Newest Gateway to Yellowstone

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

We’ve previously seen a 12-page booklet advertising the Beartooth Highway, which the Northern Pacific insisted on calling the Red Lodge High Road because its passenger trains went as far as Red Lodge. Today’s booklet, which is courtesy of the NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk Collection, is a substantial revision of the previous one.

Click image to download a 6.9-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

The booklet retains some of the same photos, or reshoots of photos from similar locations. However, the cover and some interior photos are tilted about 7 degrees, perhaps because whoever laid out the report thought that made them look for exciting. The text is heavily revised. Continue reading →

Deluxe Coach Between Seattle & Spokane

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

The North Coast Limited (trains #1 & 2) traditionally went between Seattle and Spokane at night in both directions. In the 1930s, the secondary Alaskan went at night westbound but during the day eastbound. The unnamed #5 & 6, which only went as far east as Spokane, went at night eastbound but during the day westbound.

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

Trains 5 & 6 had coaches with unreserved seating that probably weren’t air conditioned. To attract daytime travelers, NP in 1935 began offering a special reserved seat, air-conditioned coach on trains 4 and 5. A Continue reading →

Astonishing Yellowstone in 1938

Posted on June 30, 2022 by Train LoverJune 7, 2022

The 68-page Magic Yellowstone booklet of 1928 has morphed by 1938 into a 68-page Astonishing Yellowstone booklet. The essay by Emerson Hough, which filled 1-1/4 pages of the 1928 booklet, has been heavily edited so that it fits on only one page of the 1938 edition. This booklet is courtesy of NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection.

Click image to download a 21.3-MB PDF of this 68-page booklet.

While the booklet covers the same ground as the 1928 edition, it has been largely rewritten and supplied with all or nearly all new photos. These include two pages of photos of the Red Lodge Highway, which opened in 1937. In general, the photos take more space and the text has been edited down to take less space. In fact, while half the pages of the 1928 booklet are all or nearly all text, the 1938 edition has only seven pages that are mainly text. Continue reading →