New Years at Omaha Union Station

Posted on by January 2, 2025
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New Years Day comes just a week after Christmas, and Omaha Union Station followed up its Christmas 1948 dinner menu with this New Years 1949 menu. Except for the cover, the menus are exactly the same: same appetizers, same soups, same entrées, same salads, same desserts, and same prices.

Click image to download a 971-KB PDF of this menu.

Since there were plenty of each, someone could have dined both at Christmas and New Years and found sufficient variety. Vegetables and desserts had traditional holiday dishes such as brandied sweet potatoes and fresh pumpkin pie. Vegetarians — not that there were any in Omaha in 1949 — would have had a problem as all nine entrées were red meat, poultry, fish, or shellfish.

Canadian National Recipe Postcards

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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In 1927, Canadian National issued a series of postcards that featured recipes that supposedly “made the CNR dining car service popular.” Since 1927 was also the year that CN put Canada’s first 4-8-4 locomotives in service, the cards have a small image of one of these locomotives on the back. Each card included two recipes, usually one for an entrée and one for a dessert.

Click image to download a 371-KB PDF of this postcard.

This card has recipes for sausage rissole and Alma pudding. Rissole is supposed to be “chopped meat, fish, or vegetables mixed with herbs or spices, then coated in breadcrumbs and fried.” In this case, mashed potatoes are used instead of breadcrumbs. No measurements are included with the rissole recipe, but the pudding recipe includes measurements by weight. This card was used and is postmarked August 5, 1927. Continue reading →

Modern Travel in 1927

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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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 million people between September 24 and October 15. CN responded by sending its latest locomotive, a 4-8-4, the first of what it called the “Confederation” class of steam locomotives.


Click image to download a 14.9-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet.

Most of the 36 North American railroads that owned 4-8-4s called them “Northerns” out of respect for Northern Pacific, which in 1926 was the first railroad to have such a locomotive built. NP was soon followed by the Lackawanna and Santa Fe, which received their first 4-8-4s in early 1927. Canadian National was the fourth railroad to own a 4-8-4 as number 6100 was completed in June 1927, in plenty of time for B&O’s Maryland fair. Continue reading →

Quebec Bridge 1924 Breakfast Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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The cover on this menu features the same Quebec Bridge that was on the back cover of a 1921 menu shown here a few months ago. The paintings on that menu were by Harold Wellington McCrea, while the painting on today’s menu was by Richard W. Rummell (1848-1924), who also did a painting that was included in yesterday’s booklet. Another of Rummell’s paintings, an aerial view of Jasper Park, was used by CN in a 1925 booklet.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

Most of Rummell’s aerial views (though not the one of Jasper) were done from an elevation of about 300 feet above the ground, which has led some historians to believe that he did them from a hot-air balloon (which I doubt as he did many such paintings and there is no written record of him using a balloon). Most of his paintings were also in color and I suspect CN printed this one in sepia-and-white as an economy measure, which would be a disappointment after the colorful menus of 1921. Continue reading →

Grand Trunk Trains 3 & 4

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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I noted a few months ago that one of the signs of the Golden Age of passenger trains was the use of evocative names for a railroad’s premiere trains. What could be less evocative than “trains 3 & 4”? Yet that is the “name” of the trains that are the subject of this 1913 booklet of the same title.

Click image to download an 11.3-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

Trains 3 & 4 were in many ways the premiere trains of the Grand Trunk Railway, connecting Chicago with both Montreal and New York City. The booklet’s subtitle was “Route of the International Limited,” which referred to trains 1 & 2 between Montreal and Chicago and Grand Trunk’s only named trains at the time. But trains 3 & 4 had cars going to New York City, which would have been more important to Chicagoans than Montreal. Continue reading →

North Shore January 1956 Timetable

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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The North Shore may have been a “super interurban,” but super did not translate to being profitable. As historian George Hilton noted, “Few industries have arisen so rapidly or declined so quickly” as interurban rail, “and no industry of its size has had a worse financial record.” The Depression sent the North Shore into bankruptcy in 1932. Thanks to wartime traffic, it emerged from bankruptcy in 1946, only to see automobiles capture most of its customers over the next few years.

Click image to download a 4.3-MB PDF of this 12-page timetable.

This 1956 timetable has a snazzy cover (which is the back cover) compared with yesterday’s from 1949. A look inside, however, reveals far fewer trains than in 1949. The Shore Line route, which once carried nearly three dozen trains a day each way, had been abandoned in 1955. The other two routes, Skokie Valley and the Libertyville branch, still operated about as many trains as in 1949, mainly because the company was required to do so by state regulators. The railroad was abandoned in 1963.

North Shore June 1949 Timetable

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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The Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee was an electric interurban railroad connecting its namesake cities with a line along the west shore of Lake Michigan. The “North Shore” name contrasted with the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend, as both were once part of Samuel Insull‘s electric empire. To relieve congestion in the crowded Chicago suburbs along the lake shore, it built a second line a couple of miles inland known as the Skokie Valley route. The railroad also had a branch to Libertyville Illinois.

Click image to download a 4.9-MB PDF of this 12-page timetable.

In 1949, when this timetable was published, the North Shore operated dozens of trains a day. The shore line route had as many as 35 trains a day each way, while the Skokie Valley Route had around 20. The Libertyville branch had more than a dozen. This intensity of service led rail historian William Middleton to call the North Shore a “super interurban.”

Christmas at Omaha Union Station in 1948

Posted on by August 30, 2024
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Built in 1931, Omaha Union Station welcomed all the railroads that wanted to connect with Union Pacific, including the North Western, Milwaukee, Missouri Pacific, Wabash, and even, for some reason, the Rock Island (which Union Pacific didn’t favor because it had built its own line to Denver). The Burlington, which also had its own line to Denver, didn’t use the station as it had its own across the street from Union Station.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

Unlike many dining car menus we’ve seen, this one doesn’t have a la carte on one side and table d’hôte on the other. Instead, it has table d’hôte on both sides. Strangely, all of the appetizers, soups, vegetables, salads, and desserts are identical on both side. The only differences are the entrées, four on the left side and five on the right. Continue reading →

Christmas Aboard a Streamliner

Posted on by December 24, 2024
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We’ve seen Thanksgiving menus aboard UP City trains that only offered the traditional roast turkey as an entrée (but otherwise were very elegant). Here is a City of San Francisco Christmas menu that offers a choice of entrées: sole, pork chops, or roast turkey. However, there are fewer appetizers, vegetables, and desserts.

Click image to download a 452-KB PDF of this menu.

The price of the dinner, regardless of entrée, is $1.60, well below the $3.00 and $3.50 prices on the Thanksgiving menus. Looking at other Union Pacific menus, this would have been the right price for 1947, so I’ve dated it to that year. Continue reading →

Transportation Giants Lunch Menu

Posted on by October 18, 2024
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This menu proudly features three of Burlington’s most modern locomotives on its cover. The back cover has a description of each from right to left, instead of the more usual left to right.

Click image to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this menu.

The cover simply calls the right-most locomotive the “Zephyr,” even though, on one hand, there were nine locomotives that shared the slant-nose design and, on the other hand, the left-most locomotive also hauled Zephyr trains. Continue reading →