Northern Pacific Railway Coaster

Posted on by March 1, 2013
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This coaster, if that is what it is, is very different from the others shown here. For one thing, instead of having printing in ink, it is embossed with the flowers and Northern Pacific logo.

Click image to download a PDF of this coaster or doily.

Second, it is much larger: 5 inches in diameter instead of 3-1/4. What kind of drinks are served in glasses large enough to need that big of a coaster? More likely, it is not really a coaster but a doily placed under ice cream and other dishes in the dining car.

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The Empress of France Menu

Posted on by January 31, 2023
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As the “world’s greatest travel company,” Canadian Pacific had steamships and airplanes as well as trains and it happily cross-advertised between these modes. This menu from the steamship Empress of France features the Chesley Bonestell illustration of the Canadian on the front cover, with a description of the train on the back.


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Aside from being in French rather than English, menus aboard steamships appear different from those aboard trains. Food is included in the price of travel, so passengers don’t have to choose between a la carte and table d’ôte–they get all they want. Entrées include fillet of haddock, pork tenderloin, and prime rib.

Go East via Glacier National Park

Posted on by March 9, 2013
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Since the bulk of the population is in the East and the bulk of the nation’s scenic beauty is in the West, most advertising by western railroads was aimed at eastern audiences. But sometimes westerners had to go east, so the the Great Northern, like the Northern Pacific, had a few brochures aimed at them.

Click image to download a 5.3-MB PDF of this brochure.

I don’t see a date on this brochure but it is from after 1955 when the Empire Builder got its domes. It has the same number of panels as the 1956 Western Star brochure, but they are arranged differently: instead of unfolding four across and two high, Go East simply unfolds into one long, eight-panel-wide brochure.

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Popular Science Rides the Hi-Level Santa Fe Cars

Posted on by February 15, 2013
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There is an intriguing pattern in the seven trains introduced in 1956. Four were outright failures, being pulled from service after less than two years and, at best, run as lowly commuter trains. One, the Santa Fe hi-level, was a great success in the sense that it led to repeat orders from Santa Fe and eventually inspired the Amtrak Superliners. Two more were partial successes in that they continued to serve for at least a decade after their 1956 introduction.

This advertisement features Budd’s three entries into the 1956 “new trains” competition, all of which were successful relative to the Pullman, ACF, and General Motors entries. Click image for a much larger (4.3-MB) view.

All of the failures were articulated; the successes were not. The failures used two-wheel trucks, and approached just one axle per car; the successes used two four-wheel trucks per car. Most notably, all three successful trains were built by Budd.

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The Roger Williams

Posted on by October 4, 2016
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The last of Patrick McGinnis’ three trains was the Roger Williams, which entered service between Boston and Washington on April 28, 1957. Budd built the train by modifying its RDCs into a six-car train that had controls only in the first and last cars.

It seems to be easier to find photos of the Roger Williams as it lasted longer in service on the New Haven. This photo was taken, probably in 1957 or 1958, at the New Haven, Connecticut train station. Click image for a larger view.

The first and last cars also had a faring to make them appear streamlined. As a concession to the fad for trains with a low center of gravity, Budd lowered the floor of the Roger Williams by seven inches below that of a standard RDC. To allow the trains to reach 110 mph, each car had two 300-hp engines instead of the 275-hp engines that came in other RDCs.

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Dan’l Webster and the Xplorer

Posted on by February 15, 2013
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Patrick McGinnis’ second new train for the New Haven was built by Pullman in an obvious imitation of the 1949 ACF Talgo train. Pullman called its design “Train X” and like the 1949 train had just one axle, or two wheels, on most of the cars. Only the center car had two axles so that the end cars could each have an axle on the end of the train. Train X cars also used a passive tilt system so that passengers could experience a more comfortable ride going around corners.

This publicity photo of the New York Central’s Xplorer was taken by company photographer Ed Nowak. Click image for a somewhat larger view.

The train was pulled by two 1,000-hp locomotives, one on each end, built by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton, the company the resulted from the merger of what had once been two of the largest steam locomotive builders in the world. These may have been the last locomotives Baldwin built; the company continued to make parts but went out of business about a decade later.

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The John Quincy Adams and Speed Merchant

Posted on by April 25, 2015
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In 1954, a flamboyant executive named Patrick McGinnis won control of the New Haven Railroad in a proxy battle. He promised improved passenger service, but he gave also large pay increases to his executive staff; hired his wife, Lucille, to help design new trains; saved money by deferring maintenance on the railroad; and ended up in jail for cheating railroad investors.

The Diesels in each Fairbanks-Morse P-12-42 locomotive generated 1,600 horsepower, but 400 of them were used provide lights and other power for the train, so they were rated at 1,200 hp. The New Haven purchased two such locomotives to push/pull the John Quincy Adams between New York and Boston.

Before that happened, however, he spent $5 million on three new trains aimed at keeping his promise of improving passenger service in the Boston-New York corridor. All three trains were delivered in late 1956 and began service in late 1956 or early 1957–I haven’t been able to find exact dates. One of the trains, the John Quincy Adams, was an ACF Talgo train powered by Fairbanks-Morse locomotives.

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The Keystone Tubular Train

Posted on by February 15, 2013
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On June 24, 1956, the Pennsylvania Railroad inaugurated the Keystone, a twice-daily Washington-New York train that used a new design of coaches built by Budd. The floors at the ends of the cars were of normal height so that doorways matched the platforms that existed at every station along the route. But in keeping with the Talgo low-floor philosophy, the centers of the cars were lowered, reducing the car’s center of gravity.

This brochure describes the supposed advantages of a train with a lower center of gravity. There is no date but the brochure was printed well before the cars were completed. The actual cars did not have a red stripe, and the word “Pennsylvania” was in raised letters at the same height as the end windows. The cars were numbers in the 9600s and the numbers, in raised letters, appeared on the ends of the cars at the same height as the railroad name. Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this four-page brochure.

The lower center of gravity supposedly allowed the train to take curves at higher speeds without worries the cars would tip over. For some reason, Budd and Pennsylvania called this a “tubular train,” as if all normal steel passenger cars were not, in some sense, tubes.

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The Jet Rocket

Posted on by February 15, 2013
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In February, 1956, just a month after the Aerotrain made its first revenue run, the Rock Island Railroad placed the redundantly named Jet Rocket in service between Chicago and Peoria. The train consisted of cars built by ACF combined with a LWT-12 locomotive that was a near duplicate of the Aerotrain engines (but which, because of coupler differences, was incompatible with the Aerotrains).

At first glance, the Jet Rocket is not much different from an Aerotrain. Click image for a larger view.

Despite the similar locomotives, the Jet Rocket was easily distinguished from the Aerotrain by the car windows, which were slanted forward on the Aerotrain but rectangular on the Jet Rocket. Wikipedia implies that the Talgo-type cars on the Jet Rocket were the same as those built by ACF in 1949. In fact, they differed in several major ways.

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The Aerotrain

Posted on by March 3, 2018
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The year 1956 was the most momentous in the history of passenger trains since the original Zephyr and M-10000 were introduced in 1934. Not two, not three, but a total of five new kinds of trains were introduced to the American public in 1956, with two more in early 1957. The first and most famous of these was the General Motors Aerotrain.


Click image to download a 3.3-MB PDF of this brochure.

With five new trains (seven including the two in early 1957), 1956 could have been even more momentous than 1933, except for the fact that four of the seven trains were such miserable failures that they remained in service for less than two years. Two others were only partial successes: one operated for about a decade, while the other stayed in service, but in heavily modified form, for more than two decades.

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