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Writing Home from the North Coast Limited

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Train LoverJanuary 16, 2013

If Stephen Brown had written a letter to friends during his trip aboard the North Coast Limited, he might have used the stationery below. It is simple, tasteful, but frankly boring.

Click image to download a PDF of this letterhead. Click here to download a PDF of the matching envelope.

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Click image to download a PDF of this letterhead. Click here to download a PDF of the matching envelope.

The North Coast Limited Slumbercoach

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Train LoverMay 7, 2013

In 1958, the Budd Company’s continuing quest to one-up the Pullman Company resulted in the development of the Slumbercoach, a sleeping car with 40 beds. Though one was used by the porter, this was still far more than the 22 beds found in most typical sleeping cars at the time. Budd persuaded the ever-innovative Burlington Route to try Slumbercoaches on the Denver Zephyr, and the Northern Pacific (which owned nearly half the Burlington) soon agreed to lease four Slumbercoaches that, starting in January, 1959, would be a part of a pool of cars used on both the North Coast Limited and Denver Zephyr.

The Loch Long, one of several Slumbercoaches that the Northern Pacific purchased from the Baltimore & Ohio in 1964. To underscore the thrifty nature of Slumbercoaches, the NP and Burlington named theirs after lakes in Scotland. Photo by Jim Sands; click image for a larger view.

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Aboard the North Coast Limited

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Train LoverJanuary 16, 2013

This isn’t primarily a photo blog, but Stephen Brown has posted such an extraordinary set of photos of his two trips aboard the North Coast Limited that I am reposting many of them here with his permission. These photos give the flavor of riding the train and show that, even in its final years, it remained one of the world’s finest trains. (Click any photo for a larger view.)

Between Chicago and St. Paul, the North Coast Limited and Empire Builder operated over the Burlington Route (which was jointly owned by the Great Northern and Northern Pacific). In the late 1960s, the Burlington combined the two trains with the Afternoon Zephyr to create a massive train with potentially 13 dome cars. Here in the second NP dome is a view of the four GN domes in three different color schemes: orange-and-green, big-sky blue, and Cascade green.

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Northern Pacific Hats

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Train LoverNovember 25, 2012

The Northern Pacific no doubt printed hundreds of paper hats for its dining staff to wear. Click image to download a PDF showing both sides of the hat.

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This paper hat was probably printed in the thousands as it was given away to children riding the train. With a modest amount of folding it could be worn like an engineer’s hat. Click to download a 7.9-MB PDF of this hat.

Postcards from the North Coast Limited

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Train LoverJanuary 16, 2013

Here are some postcards the Northern Pacific offered passengers who wanted to tell friends about their trip aboard the North Coast Limited. Click any image to download a PDF of the postcard.

As portrayed in this Leslie Ragan painting and many early photos of the vista-dome North Coast Limited, for about a decade after introduction of the dome cars, the Northern Pacific had a policy of separating domes by at least one flat-topped car so people’s view from one dome would not be so obscured by the dome ahead of it.

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Advertising the Vista-Dome North Coast Limited

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Train LoverNovember 25, 2012

Naturally, the Northern Pacific featured dome cars and other improvements in its advertising for the North Coast Limited. I don’t know where the following ad came from, but it was put together well before the domes arrived and obviously is little influenced by Budd, the dome-cars’ builder.

The dome car in the ad has a smooth roof instead of the ribs on the actual dome-car roofs. Even the sides are smoother than in reality; though the NP domes did not have the flutes of, say, a Burlington dome, they did have a few minor ridges on the side. Finally, the drawing shows full-width diaphragms between the cars. These were common on pre-war streamliners but had gone out of fashion by 1954 and I don’t think were ever used on any Northern Pacific passenger cars.

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Traveller’s Rest

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Train LoverSeptember 7, 2023

One of my earlier posts criticized the 1948 North Coast Limited for having a drab and inadequate lounge car. That finally changed in June, 1955 when the NP converted its coach-buffet-lounge cars into the Traveller’s Rest cars, an homage to the 150th anniversary of the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

Click to download an 8.2-MB PDF of this 12-page brochure about the Lewis & Clark Traveller’s Rest car.

Raymond Loewy designed the basic concept and the cars were rebuilt in NP’s own shops at a cost of about $95,000 each (about $800,000 in today’s dollars). An innovative lunch counter at one end of the car had two tables for four and one for six people each easily served by a single waiter from a kitchen in the middle of the car. The other end of the car had a 30-seat lounge served by a small bar adjacent to the kitchen. Continue reading →

The Vista-Dome North Coast Limited

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Train LoverJune 8, 2019

The venerable North Coast Limited–the oldest named train in the Northwest–became a domeliner in August, 1954. More than seven years after the Great Northern introduced the streamlined Empire Builder, the Northern Pacific finally caught up with, and in some ways surpassed, its Northwest rivals, including the Olympian Hiawatha. As was typical of the Northern Pacific, these improvements came incrementally.

After 1954, much NP publicity prominently featured both the vista-dome cars and the stewardess-nurse on board every North Coast Limited. Click image to download a 20.7-MB PDF of this 20-page brochure about the train.

On November 16, 1952, the railway had finally speeded up its premiere train to 45-hour schedules comparable to its streamlined competition. At the same time, the Northern Pacific inaugurated the partly streamlined Mainstreeter as a secondary train, roughly comparable to the Western Star, on the 59-hour schedule of the old North Coast Limted.

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The San Francisco Chief

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Train LoverDecember 1, 2012

In an effort to compete with the California Zephyr and City of San Francisco, in July, 1954, the Santa Fe inaugurated its San Francisco Chief. In addition to coaches, sleepers, and a diner, each of the six trains included a Budd-built Big Dome, bringing the Santa Fe’s total to 14 full-length domes. In order to provide a crew dorm for 12, these last four domes had a smaller lounge downstairs.

The dome car is about the eighth car back in this photo of the San Francisco Chief in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Click image to download a PDF of this postcard.

A typical consist for the San Francisco Chief included three coaches, a lunch counter car, the Big Dome, a diner, and four sleepers. Unlike the Super Chief and El Capitan, the San Francisco Chief did not have a round-tailed observation car.

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Southern Pacific’s 3/4-Length Domes

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Train LoverNovember 23, 2012

The Southern Pacific claimed that most dome cars were too tall to fit through its tunnels. So it designed and built its own dome cars out of older cars it had on hand. Its first car was built from a 1938 Coast Daylight observation car using a dome lattice and windows purchased from the Budd Company. The car started work on the San Joaquin Daylight on June 24, 1954.

SP’s first three-quarter-length dome. Click image for a larger view.

At 15-feet, 2-inches tall, these were the shortest domes built: an inch shorter than the Pullman-built domes for the B&O Columbian; five inches shorter than the Milwaukee Super Domes; and eight inches shorter than most Budd short domes. This can be seen from the small forward- and rear-facing windows of the SP domes.

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