The Southern Pacific distributed lots of postcards of the Shasta Daylight. Here is an artist’s impression of the train led by Alco PAs going by Odell Lake in the Oregon Cascades. Click on image to download a PDF of the … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Postcard
The logo for the Golden State was a cluster of oranges, and the SP-RI used this on the drumhead on the back of the train, stationery, menus, and other items. It looks very nice on the on-board stationery, which is … Continue reading
The streamlined North Coast Limited‘s boring interior was matched by an uninspiring exterior paint scheme. While the Milwaukee Hiawatha trains were flamboyantly decorated in maroon and orange, and the Empire Builder was Pullman green and orange, the Northern Pacific elected … Continue reading
Here are a few items passengers might encounter on board one of the Olympian Hiawathas. First is a sticker that someone might apply to their luggage, more as a souvenir than as an identifier. Here’s a postcard of the Olympian … Continue reading
Rather than buy E units from General Motors or similar PAs from Alco, the Milwaukee elected to pull the Olympian Hiawatha with locomotives made by Fairbanks-Morse, a newcomer to the locomotive business. Fairbanks-Morse dated back to the early nineteenth century, … Continue reading
Passengers in the observation lounge car were invited to send letters using stationery decorated with this colorful letterhead. Click to download a PDF showing the entire first page of this four-page stationery. (The other three pages are blank.) In addition … Continue reading
The first overnight streamliner after the war was the Great Northern Empire Builder, which started service on February 7, 1947. The train’s bright orange and green colors have come to be known as the Empire Builder color scheme, yet it … Continue reading
The first railroad to introduce a new streamliner after the war was the Pere Marquette, a Michigan railroad affiliated with the Chesapeake & Ohio. Starting in 1946, the Pere Marquettes–the only streamliner I know named after the railroad that owned … Continue reading
Out of the 120,000 or so steam locomotives built and used in the United States, only about 220 were streamlined–or, as the Chicago & North Western called it, steamlined–for passenger service. Railroads went to the trouble to streamline steam locomotives … Continue reading
In hindsight, Budd-built stainless steel cars hauled by General Motors Diesel engines–such as the Burlington Zephyrs or Santa Fe Super Chief–seem to be the epitome of streamlined trains. But in the mid-1930s, Budd and General Motors were both upstarts in … Continue reading