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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 →

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 →