We’ve seen this Sunset Limited menu before from the Ira Silverman collection at Northwestern University. Today’s example is from my own collection and is dated March, 1962 (compared with September 1962 for the Silverman menu). Click image to download a … Continue reading
Just a week ago, we saw an issue of West, Southern Pacific’s periodical for travel agents, that featured the Shasta Dam under construction. It wasn’t dated but I estimated it was from 1941. Click image to download a 3.6-MB PDF … Continue reading
Whoever collected the maps, timetables, and other items from the trip from Detroit to the San Francisco convention also picked up these two doilies, either from the train from Ogden to Oakland or San Francisco/Oakland to Los Angeles. Click image … Continue reading
These menus were used on the knights templar trip from “Detroit to San Francisco and return.” They don’t say exactly what day they were used, and since there is one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner menu, they could all … Continue reading
Yesterday, I guessed that the train chartered by the Detroit masons went to Oakland over the Southern Pacific. One indication of that is that the conventioneer who saved yesterday’s system timetable also saved this timetable for the Overland Route, which … Continue reading
One of the Detroit masons who attended the 1949 convention in San Francisco kept a copy of Southern Pacific’s then-most-recent system timetable. The group would have been on the Southern Pacific from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Since the group … Continue reading
The title of this issue of West is “Many Thanks” and page 2 specifically is headlined, “To a sailor at Pearl Harbor” while page 3 is headlined “To the newspapers.” But in fact, this issue doesn’t thank the sailor or … Continue reading
This undated issue of Southern Pacific’s West bulletin to travel agents features the “new San Joaquin Daylight.” Since that train was inaugurated on July 4, 1941, this must have been published that summer. Click image to download a 4.4-MB PDF … Continue reading
Dam construction created lots of business for railroads, so Southern Pacific was happy to hype Shasta Dam, whose construction began in 1937 and continued through 1944. It is clearly incomplete in these photos, which were probably taken in around 1940 … Continue reading
This issue of West isn’t dated, but it was published in time to advertise the December 15 inauguration of the streamlined Arizona Limited, which would place it near the end of 1940. To promote the train, the periodical advertises wintertime … Continue reading
