Big Domes for the Santa Fe

Posted on by December 8, 2012
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When Burlington inaugurated its vista-domed Kansas City and American Royal Zephyrs on the Chicago-Kansas City route, the Santa Fe responded by ordering full-length domes for several trains serving the same route. Although Pullman, which manufactured the Milwaukee Super Domes, proposed to make similar cars for the Santa Fe, the railroad turned instead to Budd to build its “Big Domes.”

This advertisement from the November 8, 1954 Life magazine shows passengers craning their necks to see the scenery from the lounge portion of the Big Domes. Click image for a larger view.

In March, 1954, the Santa Fe added one of these domes to each of the six El Capitan all-coach Chicago-LA trains plus one each to a pair of trains that went between Chicago and Oklahoma City. Inaugurated in 1938 (initially between Chicago and Wichita), the northbound train each day was called the Chicagoan while the southbound train was called the Kansas Citian.

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Zephyrs to Kansas City

Posted on by November 22, 2012
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In October 1952, at a cost of $16 million (about $136 million in today’s money), the Burlington completed construction of a new 49-mile segment of track that saved two hours on its route between Chicago and Kansas City. On February 1, 1953, the railroad celebrated its “Kansas City shortcut” by introducing two new Budd-built vista-dome zephyrs between the two cities: the daytime Kansas City Zephyr and the overnight American Royal Zephyr.

Click image to download a PDF of this postcard advertising the Kansas City and American Royal Zephyrs.

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Blunt-end observation car in a Budd advertisement showing the Kansas City Zephyr as it approaches its name-sake city, where it was scheduled to arrive at 8:45 pm.

Super Domes for the Hiawathas

Posted on by October 15, 2016
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After the Super Chief received its domes on January 29, 1951, no further trains became domeliners until 1952, when domes were added to several minor trains: the Missouri Pacific Texas Eagle and Missouri River Eagle in July; the Wabash City of Kansas City in August; and–using cars rotated off the California Zephyr–the Burlington’s Ak-Sar-Ben Zephyr in December. The next (literally) big news for dome cars came on January 1, 1953, when the Milwaukee Road added the first full-length domes to its Hiawatha trains.

The Milwaukee publicity department liked this illustration so well that it also used it on the company’s 1952 annual report. Click image to download a 13.3-MB PDF of a 12-page brochure about the Super Domes.

According to the August, 1952 issue of The Milwaukee Road Magazine, the railroad held a contest to name the cars, and a Milwaukee Road employee named B. H. Perlick won by suggesting “Super Domes.” The term was certainly appropriate. At 200,000 pounds, the cars were far heavier than the typical 120,000 to 140,000 pound weight of a typical streamlined passenger car. Each car’s wheel sets alone weighed more than 65,000 pounds and were the first six-wheel trucks for a streamlined car. Though three inches shorter than the tallest short-domes that had been built up to that time, the extra three inches in the latter domes was for an air conditioning duct in the ceiling, so Super Dome passengers enjoyed front and back windows that were just as large on those of the tallest Budd-built short domes.

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Turquoise Woman Stationery

Posted on by August 1, 2013
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Click image to download a PDF of this letterhead.

Super Chief passengers could write letters on this beautiful stationery featuring “Turquoise Woman.” They could mail the letters in envelopes marked “Super Chief.”

Click image to download a PDF of this envelope.
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The Indian Ads

Posted on by November 20, 2012
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In addition to ads featuring the interior of the train, the Santa Fe ran a long series of brown- or turquoise-colored ads featuring Southwest Indian art. One reason may have been that two-color printing cost less than four-colors, but another would have been to emphasize the exotic nature of travel by train through Navaho and other Indian country.

Click any image for a larger view.

This ad ran in a 1951 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine.

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Advertising the Pleasure Dome

Posted on by September 7, 2023
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The Santa Fe ran two distinctly different series of ads for the Super Chief and its other trains. One series featured four-color illustrations of scenes on board the train–mostly of some part of the Pleasure Dome. The other series, which I’ll take up tomorrow, featured two-color (black and either brown or turquoise) illustrations usually showing some piece of Southwest Indian art.

Notice the double meaning: “next to the stars” including both the stars in the sky and the movie stars who ride the “train of the stars.” Click on any image for a larger view.

The above ad provides an excellent view of the interior of the dome, and only slightly exaggerates the size of the windows. The ad probably appeared in Saturday Evening Post in 1951. The earliest ads relied on illustrations rather than photos both to make an idealized portrait of the train and because the Pleasure Domes may not yet have been completed when the ads were first laid out.

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The Turquoise Room

Posted on by March 11, 2023
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Santa Fe publicity promoted the Turquoise Room as “the only private dining room on rails.” After 1954, when Union Pacific included a private dining room in the dome-diners of the City of Los Angeles and City of Portland, this changed to “the first private dining room on rails.”

Souvenir ashtray sold by the Santa Fe. Click for a larger view.

The Turquoise Room was decorated with light woods and a brilliant turquoise mosaic on one wall. By the Amtrak era, this mosaic was simply a framed piece of paper, but for the original car, “Zuni Indians hand-fashioned the sterling silver medallion inlaid with specially selected turquoise.” This medallion was replicated on the room’s menus, in advertising, and on ash trays that the railroad sold to customers for a nominal cost. Turquoise was particularly appropriate to use on the Super Chief as it is not only used for distinctive Southwest Indian jewelry, it is sometimes called the traveler’s stone that is said “to possess healing and protective powers.”

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The Super Chief Pleasure Domes

Posted on by November 15, 2022
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This photo of Pleasure Dome 501 was taken on January 29, 1951, the day the Pleasure Domes were first introduced to regular service on the Super Chief. Click image for a larger view.

With the delivery of new Pullman-built sleepers after the war, the Santa Fe had upgraded the Super Chief to daily service on Leap Day (February 29), 1948. On January 28, 1951, the Santa Fe added a single dome car to each of its Super Chief trains. Built by Pullman, the domes had flat panes of glass and were mid-way in height between the B&O and Wabash domes.


Cutaway diagram shows the dome, lounges, and Turquoise Room. Click to download a 2-MB PDF of this brochure introducing the Pleasure Dome.

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UP Buys the Train of Tomorrow

Posted on by November 20, 2012
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After the Blue Bird, the next domeliner to hit the timetables didn’t even have a name. This was the Union Pacific’s Portland-Seattle pool trains, numbers 457 and 458 (the other trains in the pool being owned by Great Northern and Northern Pacific). The UP made these trains into domeliners by buying the General Motors Train of Tomorrow when that train finished its national tour at the end of 1949.

The cars were first added to the Portland-Seattle trains on June 18, 1950. In keeping with the Union Pacific’s “city of” train names, some people have called this train the “City of Seattle,” and some even claim that UP employees informally used that term in the 1950s. However, the name was not used in any timetable.

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Wabash Blue Bird

Posted on by November 20, 2012
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After the Twin Cities Zephyr, the Colorado Eagle, the California Zephyr, the Columbian, and Royal Gorge, the next train to receive dome cars was the Wabash Blue Bird connecting Chicago and St. Louis. The railroad introduced the streamlined train in this corridor on February 26, 1950.

The Wabash Blue Bird near St. Louis in 1958. Click image for a larger view.

Like the Chicago-Twin Cities route, the Chicago-St. Louis corridor was hotly competitive, with the Wabash facing the Illinois Central and the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio (which took over the Alton Route in 1947). The dome cars gave the Wabash, which had been a minor player in this corridor, a competitive advantage for many years.

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