I was just sitting around, not doing anything in particular, when I decided to tackle another box of the family archives, to see what was in it. For years, decades, I’ve been trying to get all these ancient letters, photographs, diaries, documents, and heirlooms identified and sorted, for distribution to all of my nephews and their families, as I have no heirs myself, and am the last survivor of my own family (which comes with being born at the tail-end of it, of course).
By chance, I picked up a box of stuff from one of my older brothers, who died nearly thirty years ago. There was a lot of interesting stuff in there, but only one thing which it’s safe to brag about on the internet, lest primitives stalking franksolich know what I
really have.
My three older brothers were all avid railway fans, an interest that made sense, given that after the family moved out to Nebraska from New York City, it thereafter lived in towns alongside the main line of the most important railway in America, the Union Pacific. I came along too late to see all the history they’d seen, though.
I found the following sheets from old Union Pacific calendars, probably dating from the late 1950s, early 1960s (there’s nothing to indicate their years; all that was sheared off), advertising their famous yellow-and-red streamliners.
The images here are pretty small—so as to fit on the page—but the original pictures are circa 14â€x11â€.
The
City of Portland (the above and the four following), daily from Chicago to Portland, Oregon when I was a kid. It passed through our town alongside the Platte River during the middle of the night.
The
City of Portland coach vista-dome car; there were three dome cars on each train—a coach, a dining car, and a lounge car:
There’s nothing to identify the city, but I assume it’s Portland, Oregon; one’s free to correct me if it’s not:
The
City of Los Angeles:
The
City of San Francisco, in northern Utah:
Near (but not exactly there) where the
City of Los Angeles. the
City of San Francisco, and the
City of Portland went their three separate ways west (but only the
City of Los Angeles served Salt Lake City):
There was also a
City of Denver, a first-rate, top-quality train equal to the other three
City streamliners, but the Union Pacific didn’t seem to promote it much, perhaps because it was essentially an overnight train Chicago-Denver, passing through scenic Nebraska when it was too dark to see anything.
But the city of Denver did at least get on a calendar:
Eastern Wyoming:
Somewhere in Utah:
Somewhere, somewhere, I know not where:
The Union Pacific made a big deal about its dome cars, probably because while other railways had dome cars that were coaches, the Union Pacific offered dome cars that were additionally dining cars, lounge cars, and even sleeping cars:
Finally, the Union Pacific heavily promoted Sun Valley, Idaho, a ski resort specifically created by the railway to encourage traffic. Sun Valley once was a big deal; I have no idea if it still is:
