I’m not sure that a defunct mine was the best way to advertise Colorado, especially as it is a tacit admission that the mineral revenues that helped pay the Rio Grande’s bills were drying up. In 1943, when this menu … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Menu
Unlike the stories on the backs of the black-and-white photo menus shown in the past few days, the stories on the back of the pastel menus that Rio Grande began using in 1938 were related to the cover images. This … Continue reading
This menu was used on the same American Farm Bureau Convention trip as yesterday’s. The breakfast offered was simple: juice, cereal, roast beef hash or eggs, bread, and beverage. Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu. We … Continue reading
The cover photo on this menu appears to have been taken by William Henry Jackson in 1873, more than 70 years before the menu was issued in 1936. The Mount of the Holy Cross was so distinctive to look at … Continue reading
The scene shown on the cover of this 1935 menu is one of the most beautiful and colorful in all of Colorado, but the muddy black-and-white photo doesn’t come close to doing it justice. Taken from near the location of … Continue reading
The front cover of this menu shows one of Colorado’s smaller mountains (less than 13,300 feet above sea level), which is located almost due west of Denver. The back cover tells a story from an 1857 expedition by then-Captain Randolph … Continue reading
Here’s a dinner menu with the same date, March 1956, as yesterday’s lunch menu. This one is obviously marked for the Kansas City Zephyr instead of the Nebraska Zephyr, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the zephyrs during … Continue reading
In the mid-1950s, someone at the Burlington Route decided that all Zephyr menus should follow a single brand standard. This standard dispensed with beautiful cover photos of trains or scenery and enticing descriptions of places to go by train on … Continue reading
Here’s another Twin Zephyr menu, this one dated 1950. By that time, Burlington had replaced the 1936 Twin Zephyrs with the world’s first domeliner in scheduled service, consisting of a baggage-refreshment car, four dome coaches, a diner and dome-observation car. … Continue reading
The original three-car (including locomotive) Twin Zephyrs featured in yesterday’s brochure had 88 seats, but the trains were so popular that Burlington immediately made plans to replace them with a six-car (plus locomotive) train that had 222 revenue seats. The … Continue reading