The Siskiyou Semi-Loops

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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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 five peaks above 7,000 feet and a pass between Oregon and California at about 4,100 feet, the Siskiyous were not as high as the Cascade Mountains, but the extent of the mountain range still created a formidable barrier. Rail builders ended up with a twisty line that included at least seven short-radius turns or semi-loops of 180 degrees or more.


Click image to download a PDF of this postcard.

Trains heading north in California did at least three 180-degree turns as they ascended the mountains. The first two, Cantara and Sawmill, were between Dunsmuir and Mt. Shasta, before the 1926 Cascade line split off from the 1887 Siskiyou line. The publisher of the above postcard spelled Cantara two different ways on the front and back of the card, both of them wrong.

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More 1926 Blotters

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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Though not as colorful as yesterday’s blotters, these offer some variety and show that GN was still calling its two-year-old train the “New Oriental Limited.” The first blotter is a convenient combination of a notepad and blotter. While this might have been useful to some, it limited the area that could be used for advertising, which may be why this format wasn’t often used.


Click images to download PDFs of these blotters. File sizes are between 0.3 and 0.5 MB.

The second blotter features St. Paul’s Railroad and Bank Building, which was the headquarters for the Great Northern (as well as NP and First National Bank). The corner of the sixteen-story building shown in the illustration served as a ticket office for the GN, NP, CB&Q, and no doubt other railroads.

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A Chain of Great Hotels on Wheels

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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These attractive blotters advertised the not-quite-so-new Oriental Limited in 1926. The illustrations are signed “FG,” but I have no idea who that might have been. As we will see on later blotters, two years after the train began service, GN still often used the word “new” with reference to the Oriental Limited, but it left that word off of these blotters.


Click images to download PDFs of these blotters, which are 0.4 to 0.5 MB in size.

The first blotter illustrates a 4 o’clock tea service that was offered in the observation car. This both symbolized the Oriental aspect of the train and competed with the Milwaukee Olympian, which offered a similar tea service at least as early as 1912. This blotter was distributed by GN’s passenger agent in Chicago.

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New York Central 1958 Menu

Posted on by August 18, 2014
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This menu says it was for the 20th Century Limited and the Commodore Vanderbilt. The latter was inaugurated as an all-Pullman train in 1938 and left New York/Chicago about 1-3/4 hours before the Century. Since it made a few more stops than the Century, which was essentially non-stop between New York and Chicago, the Commodore arrived just a few minutes before the Century.


Click image to download a 1.9-MB PDF of this menu.

By 1956, the Commodore lost its all-Pullman status with the addition of coaches, and in 1957 the two trains were combined much like the Santa Fe combined the Super Chief and El Capitan and the Union Pacific combined the City of Los Angeles and Challenger. One difference was that the two western roads offered completely different menus in separate dining cars of the trains, which were separated by a gate, while this menu shows that the New York Central used the same menu for both of its trains. By 1960, the railroad dropped the fiction that it was running two trains and the name Commodore Vanderbilt disappeared from the timetable.

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If Its Service, Go Great Northern

Posted on by September 6, 2023
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“If its Service, Go Great Northern,” say these two blotters. What the heck does that mean? It must mean, “If you want good service, go Great Northern.”


Click images to download a 0.4-MB PDF of each blotter.

The real message of the blotters is that GN offered “three good trains daily” between Seattle and Vancouver, BC and three more good trains daily between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Duluth. GN had no rail competition on the route between Seattle and Vancouver. Continue reading →

Take a Great Northern Vacation

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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The four 1925 blotters shown here mostly have a vacation theme in common. The first one, which was distributed by GN’s Kansas City agent, encourages people to go to Glacier Park. This would be on trains 43 and 44, sometimes called the Adventureland, taking the Burlington to Billings and Great Northern to Glacier.


Click any image to download a PDF of that blotter. These files are 0.4 to 0.5 MB in size.

The next three blotters all use the same graphic of an angler standing in, or possibly next to, a boat on a lack in what is presumably Glacier National Park. The first was distributed by the GN’s St. Louis agent and encourages people to consider taking a tour of the American and Canadian Rockies and Cascade mountains offered by the St. Louis General Assembly. This tour may have contributed to the formation of Burlington Escorted Tours a year or so later.

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East Over the Mountains Via Glacier Park

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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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 Washington Cascades.


Click any blotter image to download PDFs of the blotters, which range from 0.4 to 0.6 MB in size.

Though less than 6,000 feet high (compared with more than 14,000 for Mt. Rainier), Mt. Index was a spectacular sight from the railway, partly because it was so close and partly because the railway was only about 500 feet high at this point. Mt. Index received less attention from GN marketing in later years because the westbound streamlined Empire Builder and Western Star in both directions were scheduled to pass by it in the dark.

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Best Wishes

Posted on by May 29, 2020
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For Christmas in 1924, friends and customers of the Great Northern Railway received an elegant little book about the first American clipper ship to serve the China trade. Although the book doesn’t say so, The Oriental and Captain Palmer was written by Grace Flandrau and was either the first or second piece (after Seven Sunsets) she wrote for the Great Northern. The booklet honors the designer of the Oriental and draws a parallel between his work and that of James J. Hill’s and implies a parallel between the ship and GN’s new Oriental Limited, which the railway had introduced that year.

Click image to download a 5.6-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet.

I was intrigued by this book since I started doing research on Grace Flandrau’s work for GN’s historical expeditions, but the only copy I could find for sale was for more than I wanted to pay. When I visited the Minnesota History Center last August, I found several copies in their files of GN records, and (since scanners are not allowed) photographed them all. Because it is based on photos rather than scans, the PDF is not up to my usual standards but it is quite readable.

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The Finest Train to the Pacific Northwest

Posted on by April 1, 2015
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Here are some pretty blotters that GN used to advertise the Oriental Limited in 1925. Green blotters show the interior of a section sleeper while tan blotters show the train’s dining car. Otherwise, the blotters have different text and some seem to be associated with GN agents in specific cities.


Click any image to download PDFs of the blotters, which range from 0.4 to 0.6 MB in size.

Noting that the Oriental Limited is the “finest train to the Pacific Northwest,” this blotter was handed out by GN’s “travel headquarters” on 4th and Jackson Streets in St. Paul. Located a block west of St. Paul Union Depot, 4th and Jackson was the location of the Railroad and Bank Building that James J. Hill had built to be the headquarters for the GN, NP, and the First National Bank, which he also controlled (and which formed the nucleus for what is now called US Bank).

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Your Patronage Is Solicited and Appreciated

Posted on by November 25, 2014
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After the introduction of the Empire Builder in 1929, the Oriental Limited became the Great Northern’s secondary transcontinental train. Until then, the secondary train was called the Glacier Park Limited. This 1924 blotter (an identical one was issued in 1925) notes that the train went from St. Paul to Seattle, indicating it did not have through cars continuing to or from Chicago. In fact, according to the 1928 timetable, while the westbound train connected with CB&Q train 51 from Chicago, the eastbound train connected with C&NW train 510 to Chicago, suggesting that GN’s Burlington subsidiary didn’t even think the Glacier Park Limited was important enough to have an eastbound connection.


Click images to download PDFs of these blotters, which are 0.2 to 0.6 MB in size.

Like the Oriental Limited, the Glacier Park Limited had Pullmans, coaches, a first-class coach and smoking car, tourist sleepers, a diner, and an observation car. Unlike the premiere train, the Glacier Park Limited‘s observation car was half sleeping rooms, while the Oriental Limited devoted that space to the valet, ladies’ maid, and showers.

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