In January 1927, Seaboard completed its “all Florida” line to Miami and passengers no longer had to ride a “parlor car bus” between West Palm Beach and Miami. Among the passengers on the first train to Miami was Dorothy Walker Bush, mother and grandmother of the U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush had been born in 1924 but apparently he didn’t get to go on this trip.

Click image to download a 6.1-MB PDF of this 12-page booklet from the Touchton Map Library.

Unlike yesterday’s booklet, this one has several interior illustrations of the train, making it clear that this was truly a first-class limited. Among the services illustrated were the barber shop, valet service, maid-manicure, men’s and women’s showers, dining car, club car, and observation car. The centerfold has a bright yellow-and-blue map of the Florida peninsula (colors now identified with Ukraine’s flag).

First run of the Orange Blossom Special into Miami on January 8, 1927. The disgruntled-looking man next to Miss Miami is Governor John Martin while the man next to Miss Hialeah is Seaboard president S. Davies Warfield, who strongly supported the railroad’s Florida extensions. The only person who looks happy is Miss Hialeah. Click image for a larger view.

Although yesterday’s brochure claimed that the Orange Blossom Special “will operate year round,” that proved not to be the case. Today’s calls it “Florida’s Distinguished Winter Train” and specifically announces the “third successive winter season.” Yesterday’s was for 1925-1926 while today’s says it was for 1927-1928 even though it actually began on January 2, 1928.

For 1928, the Orange Blossom Special was operated as two separate trains south of Richmond, one to the East Coast and the other, leaving Richmond 10 minutes later, to the West Coast. The Seaboard Florida Limited, which had been two trains in 1926, was merged into one north of Wildwood in 1928. Also listed in this booklet is the Carolina-Florida Special. The East and West Coast sections of these two trains split in Wildwood, Florida.

With its extensions down the Florida peninsula, Jacksonville was no longer the gateway city for the Seaboard. Instead, it by-passed Jacksonville with a line from Gross to Baldwin, Florida. The Orange Blossom Special, this booklet notes, “does not go into and out of Jacksonville,” though it did carry a Jacksonville sleeper that was split from the train at Gross.