“The history of the Canadian Pacific Railway has been termed a tale of gallantry, honesty and steadfastness,” says this booklet. Apparently, the people who built the railway did so solely as part of their patriotic duty to the new confederation … Continue reading
The Baltimore & Ohio celebrated its centennial in 1927, the same year that Canada celebrated sixty years of confederation. B&O generously invited other railroads to participate in its Fair of the Iron Horse, which was attended by more than 1.3 … Continue reading
In addition to images by Bern Hill, Greg Palumbo was nice enough to provide Streamliner Memories readers a number of booklets and other images from General Motors’ locomotive past. This particular booklet is a speech made by GM President Harlow … Continue reading
Canadian National Railways wasn’t even 30 years old in 1947. However, its earliest predecessor, the Montreal and Lachine Rail Road, made its inaugural trip in 1847, giving CN the excuse for publishing this booklet. Click image to download a 5.0-MB … Continue reading
Issued 18 years after yesterday’s brochure, this one covers the same ground but does so in a much more visual fashion. We’ve seen the front cover before on a 1963 menu commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Northern Pacific’s last … Continue reading
Canadian Pacific’s first Empress of Japan made its first revenue voyage in April, 1891, and its last one in July, 1922, thus providing more than 31 years of service during which it made 315 trans-Pacific trips. During two of those … Continue reading
Over the past seven weeks, I’ve presented nearly 50 timetables from the Rumsey map collection ranging from 1872 to 1907. Among other things, these timetables showed the evolution of train names, from no names to type names such as “accommodation” … Continue reading
We’ve previously seen a 1958 edition of this booklet; today’s is from 1950. The Association of American Railroads apparently put out an updated version every year, or almost every year, between 1950 and 1960 or so. Click image to download … Continue reading
Railroads like to write their own histories so they can leave out all the scandals, swindles, bankruptcies, and other messy details. But this one — a reprint from Western Pacific‘s employee magazine — is pretty honest. George Gould, who controlled … Continue reading
Today is the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. I am not particularly fond of an event that I think of as the biggest government boondoggle in nineteenth-century America. If you care to find out why, … Continue reading
