Just looking at my Milwaukee, Athern 60’ Double Door Hi-Cubes… the slogan reads “America’s Resourceful Railroad”… Um…they ran out of resources…went bust didn’t they?
I’ve heard “The Rock” described as “Blown to the winds”.
So… any more glorious examples of slogans etc that went wrong / missed the mark?
slogans on freight cars were just ways of advertising sevices,in the fifties most roads promoted their finest passenger trains( phobe snow,super chief,etc), as passenger seviced declined and amtrack took over railroads tried slogans to promote freight service(bee line, good track road,etc). the best example I can think of is the anticipated merger of southern pacific with santa fe, both roads painted a few locos and lettered them sp/sf, the merge never and the slogan became shouldn’t paint/so fast.
Liked that BXCARMIKE ! LOL
DUH! Answer my own question… the privatised “Train Operating Unit” (Passenger carrier) West Anglis Great Northern instantly became “We Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”… guess that’s not a slogan though… just real life…
Okay… so include some name changes and give us a laugh please…
Slogans isn’t any new on boxcars…Not only did slogans advertise passenger trains but fast freight trains as well.Also slogans advertised other messages…GB&W once touted “Watch The Green Bay Packers In Action.”
Of course there where other slogans as well such as NC&STL “Dixie Line” or the L&N’s “Old Reliable.” How about PRR’s “Don’t Stand Me Still” or The C&O’s C&O For Progress or “Sleep Like A Kitten”".The list goes on.
Don’t confuse Railfan’s jargons and slams using railroad names as it has NO REAL meaning or valvue…
The Milwaukee’s last advertising slogan in wide use was “America’s Resourceful Railroad”, although there were some materials put out in anticipation of a merger with (or acquisition by) Grand Trunk Western, and a limited amount of “Soo/Milwaukee System” materials.
Before “America’s Resourceful Railroad” the tag line was “The Railroad of Creative Crews.” Really.
UP building america. Hey the one that biulds to sue others to build there bank account.
Since I model the Burlington, they had “Way of the Zephyrs” on one side and “Everywhere West” on the other. Not really sure they went everywhere west though!
Another similar remark I’ve heard was about Rock Island’s reporting marks CRIP, seemed to be fitting in the end. Too bad though, it was an interesting road with lots of history.
RedGrey62
CSX could use a slogan such as THANKS FOR USING QUALITY IN MOTION ON THE ROUTE OF COURTEOUS SERVICE on some of it’s freight cars.
i have a question kinda related to this topic. why is it UP & CNW both used the slogans: “route of the streamliners” and “the overland route”? i have several 40’ boxcars by both of these roads, and the same slogans are on them. why would both of these roads copy each other[?][%-)]
THe C&NW operated the UP’s trains between Omaha & Chicago. C&NW built a connection to Freemont Neb to bypass Omaha.
There were some routes like the Dixie Flyers where several railroads operated a pool of equipment to get trains from the Midwest to Florida. Some equipment would be painted in a simalar scheme to make the train look better.
TWO SUPERB SITES! [:D][:D][:D]
Keep them coming!!!
That really is an interesting site. It shows hao good and how bad some of theold slogans were. I did not understand one of them though. Deleware, Lackawanna and Western; The Route of Phoebe Snow. They can’t mean the singer can they?
Canadian Pacific’s one is great, ‘spans the world’, well, now it does, all the way to Australia.[^][^][^][^]
That’s one cool site, On30shay !!![wow][:-^][tup][swg][:-,]
Phoebe Show was a fictious woman that wore white gloves and dress to show that the Lackawanna burned clean coal and you didn’t get all of the soot from riding their trains. She was in the same league as Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemimah and the Dutch Cleanser lady.
You missed the mark; we have trial lawyers like John Edward, who sue people for money for a living. UP probably doesn’t make money suing people, I don’t remember the calendar people paying millions of dollars, do you? Other than a few occasions where UP was well within their lawful rights to do it, when has UP sued just to make money. If you just hate UP guts because they bought out your favorite railroad, please don’t slam the UP every chance you get. UP does build America, but that’s another story.
Phoebe Snow goes back at least 100 years, Lackawanna advertising would have a drawing of her and poetry which always managed to rhyme “dress of white” with “anthracite”, the hard, clean burning coal the DLW used. I think it was only later (like in the thirties??) that the name Phoebe Snow showed up on freight cars.