The Detroit Publishing Company, which printed yesterday’s postcards, went bankrupt in 1923. Though it continued to print postcards for Fred Harvey until 1932, it no longer employed photographers to add to its collection of images. Thus, it is likely that … Continue reading
In 1907, the Postal Service decided to allow people to use just half of the back of a postcard for an address, leaving the rest for a message. This allowed postcard companies to use the entire front of the card … Continue reading
Fred Harvey, who ran hotels and restaurants along the Santa Fe Railway as well as Santa Fe dining cars, put out hundreds of postcards for tourists to send home. These three cards were published in 1905, before the Postal Service … Continue reading
Like many railroad maps, the map is on one side while the other side advertises the railroad’s trains. This 1938 map advertises the railroad’s Four Great Routes, but also maps and pictures steamships from New Orleans to New York as … Continue reading
The Arizona Limited was a kind of semi-train: semi-streamlined, semi-daily, operated only half the year (actually just three-and-one-half months), and by two railroads using two train sets for only two years. Each Pullman-only train set consisted of a heavyweight Rock … Continue reading
We’ve seen Maurice Logan’s paintings for the Southern Pacific in the form of posters. SP also issued some postcards with his paintings that are good examples of Logan’s impressionistic style of illustrating. The first shows “Lake Apache on the Apache … Continue reading
Southern Pacific had a line entering San Francisco from the south, but trains from Portland and Ogden terminated at Oakland. While passengers to Oakland and other East Bay communities got off at Oakland’s 16th Street Station, until 1958, passengers to … Continue reading
We begin the New Year with a series of posts about the Southern Pacific. Before 1926, the main line of the Southern Pacific between Portland and Sacramento went over the Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon and northern California. With just … Continue reading
Not as colorful as yesterday’s blotters, these provide examples of the variety of blotters GN used to advertise its premiere train in 1925. The first one shows the train pulled by a P2, 4-8-2 locomotive by Mt. Index in the … Continue reading
This postcard illustrates a very unusual car. In 1953, Union Pacific replaced the pre-war City of Denver with modern equipment. Most of the new cars were conventional, with coaches and sleepers easily exchangeable with nearly identical cars on other City … Continue reading
