Here’s a breakfast menu that features a Cascade Mountain scene on the cover. It’s probably supposed to represent Mount Shasta, though Shasta doesn’t really look like that. It could also be Odell Lake, though again the mountains behind it don’t … Continue reading
The cactus on this menu is meant to represent Phoenix and other Arizona resorts reached by Southern Pacific trains. Specifically, it looks a little like a scene from Saguaro National Park near Tucson. Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF … Continue reading
In contrast with yesterday’s, the silhouette on today’s menu is easy to recognize: California redwoods. When its passenger trains still took the Siskiyou Route from Portland to Oakland via Medford, Southern Pacific offered bus tours to the redwoods via Pacific … Continue reading
This is the first in a series of menus that feature a silhouette of some scene along the SP. The menu cover is narrower than page three so a colored stripe on the righthand side of page three that designates … Continue reading
Southern Pacific advertising proclaimed that the railroad offered “four great routes”: Shasta, Overland, Golden State, and Sunset. But the Sunset and Golden State routes were really the same route for the first 800 miles from Los Angeles to El Paso. … Continue reading
In addition to system timetables (which, in 1936, were 56 pages long) and condensed timetables (16 pages in 1935), Southern Pacific in the 1930s produced 24-page timetables for each of its four main routes. Each appears to be a combination … Continue reading
The cover doesn’t say so, but this is really a condensed timetable. It is 16 pages long, while a true Southern Pacific system timetable in the 1930s was 56 pages. Click image to download a 12.0-MB PDF of this 16-page … Continue reading
This is the first of fifteen Southern Pacific timetables I’ll be presenting over the next month. This one is for the Portland-San Francisco/Oakland Shasta Route, including both the Cascade and Siskiyou lines. It shows some branch line trains along this … Continue reading
Southern Pacific opened up the Natron Cutoff in 1926, allowing trains to go over the Cascades instead of the Siskiyous. This postcard folder has a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge before it was painted orange. In fact, it is … Continue reading
This postcard folder is postmarked “Mailed from Summit Siskiyous, Top of World, Mt. Shasta 14,444 ft. elevation.” There’s no date on the postmark, but it must be later than yesterday’s, which was mailed with a penny stamp, as this one … Continue reading
