I recently received a lot of help from Forum Folk about what slogan/motto was written on the side of the Northern Pacific locos: i.e. “Main Street of the North West” which I reckoned was a prety good one!
Where there other good ones like that used by other RRs (including fallen flags)? [;)]
Cheers
Kozzie Dave
Dave,
There were a lot of railroad slogans, not usually carried on locomotives like the NP.
Here are a few. I won’t try to explain them.
New York Central - “The Water Level Route”
Monon - “The Hoosier Line”
Seaboard - “Through the Heart of the South”
Illinois Central - “The Main Line of Mid America”
C&O - “C&O for Progress”
B&O - “The Capitol Route”
Denver & Rio Grande - “The Scenic Line of the World”
Lehigh Valley - “The Route of the Black Diamond”
That’s a start, anyway!
Peter
Burlington Route – “Way of the Zephyrs” and “Everywhere West”
ATSF – “Santa Fe All The Way”
Southern – “Southern Serves the South” and “Gives A Green Light to Innovation”
How 'bout UP’s new slogan, “Now hiring!”
Western Pacific Rides Like a Feather
CSX
ship with csx…when your cargo absoluty positivly has to get their…someday…
csx engineer
Hey crew…thanks for the input! [:)]
I can pretty much work out what most of them mean…
But one has me beat… The Monon slogan: The Hoosier Line…
…hmmm…Hoosier? A place? A football team? [%-)][:I]
Dave
FFF…Frisco Faster Freight. [:D]
Dave,
The term Hoosier refers to the residents of the state that most of the line runs through (but right now I can’t remember which!)
I don’t know why I had to start the answers, either!
Peter
Well Peter, by starting the answers, you did get things rolling (no pun intended ha ha [:D]), and provided plenty of info at the same time! [8D]
No doubt more Forum Folk will comment as they have a read…[;)]
Hoosiers just struck me as an unusual word, even more, now that you tell me it’s a name for residents in a particular state…I guess we do something similar, “banana benders” for us lot up here in Queensland and so on…
Dave
(Kozzie)
Hoosiers=Indiana people-the Monon’n official name was Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville.
(I know this was already mentioned by CBQ_Guy, but he left out part of the slogan)
ATSF-Ship and Travel Santa Fe, all the way.
C&O-Ship and go, C&O
Milwaukee Road-“America’s resourceful railroad”
CB&Q-“From wagon wheels to stainless steel…The Burlington Zephyrs”
B&O: “Linking 13 great states”
Dave–
“The Katy Serves the Southwest Well” --Matthew Sloan era advertising slogan(late 1930’s-1945–yellow cars that we talked about before but was painted on the cars regardless of color), that was changed in 1946 to “The Katy Serves the Southwest” after Sloan, according to legend, overheard a smart-aleck employee who was loudly asking, within earshot, of course, “Where is that southwest well??”[:o)]
During the late steam and early diesel era, Katy painted large safety slogans on the rear of switcher tenders and on the sides of their diesel switch engines that read “Work safely and carefully. Avoid damage to freight and equipment.” These were well known almost to the point of being a recognizable slogan and contributed to their winning several national safety awards. They also had small safety messages painted on sheet metal plates mounted on the caboose platform handrails.
Cotton Belt Route–“Blue Streak Fast Freight”
As an aside, the Blue Streak Merchandise ( became the BSMFF, or just “BSM” to many folks, when SP took most of it over) vied back and forth for years with the “Katy Komet” for the title of fastest freight in USA during the post-WWII era.
Cheers, mate!
hey drephpe, good to hear you talking about cabeese again [(-D][(-D]
…look out! [:O] your comments cause me to ask a question…heh heh [:P]
Where did the Cotton Belt get the idea of the “Blue Streak” from?
That Katy employee definitely had a sense of humour! If only Sloane had just changed the S in “Serves” and the W in “Well” to lower case, making it a sentence…
Talking about wells…I only found out the other day that “Las Vegas” is just Spanish for The Wells - doesn’t quite have same ring to it does it ? heh heh [:D]
Dave
(Kozzie)
Dave,
In country like Nevada, water is probably important.
Look at the station names north of Adelaide - Dry Creek, Two Wells, Crystal Brook, Mambray Creek, apart from the Ports (Wakefield, Pirie, Germein, Augusta), there’s not much else! I’ve left out Snowtown, because I don’t believe it ever snowed there, even before half the local population murdered the other half!
I think “Blue Streak” is from the apparent colour of a lightning flash (the SEC in Victoria had a locomotive named “Electric Blue” once). A weak attempt to stay on topic!
Peter
D&RGW - “Through the Rockies, not around them!”
And, yeah the UP use some good slogans:
“Were a great big rollin´ railroad” with this music style placard and this song.
“Dependable Transportation”
“Building America” because of the real heritage
And they made also the biggest joke: WE WILL DELIVER - hups, good idea, wrong time!
BTW: Show me one modern railroad that use the basic design from 1937 like UP.
CRIMETIME - Was this story from May 1999, I think? [:-,][:-,]
PS: Hi Peter[:D][:D][:D]
Ulrich,
I can’t remember when the murders occurred in Snowtown, but I read the trial reports fairly recently. These were real losers attacking eachother for stupid reasons.
Snowtown was a crossing station on the broad gauge, and I got some good photos there when riding trains to Port Pirie. I only have good memories from there.
Santa Fe kept their image fairly well, (until BNSF).
If you consider NS as the successor to N&W, they’ve had plain black all that time!
The New Haven image is doing well for a line that disappeared in 1968!
To get back on topic, Milwaukee Road had “The Route of Hiawatha” after 1934!
Peter
“SEPTA same day service”*
Dave–
Pete’s right. Streak of lightning. And they used that on their advertising (and cars) with the cotton gin cam logo superimposed. They were semiautonomous, right up to the UP merger, by the way–brass was in KC.
Cheers, mates!