Rail Romance

Sixty years ago the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy's prime sales talk to prospective passengers was that its trains had been equipped with Westinghouse Air Brakes. . . . The Union Pacific boasted "one pure passenger train a day" out of Omaha, for San Francisco four days away. . . . Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific ("Safe-Reliable-Elegant") advertised that "its road bed is simply perfect and its track is laid with steel rails"; its Pullman Palace Sleeping Cars "lighted by Pintsch Gas." . . . Southern Pacific, in 1899, assured magazine readers that "a Personal Conductor and Porter go through with the car."

As time passed and train service came to be taken for granted, railroad advertising concerned itself largely with the tourist trade. Pictures of Nature's grandeur, of Yellowstone geysers, California trout fishermen, New Mexico Indians, Florida bathing girls, New England sailboats, loomed large in railroad copy. "Vacationland" became a copywriter's cliche. There were exceptions in the form of notable institutional campaigns. Lackawanna invented "Phoebe Snow," the girl who traveled "The Road of Anthracite" without getting dirty. Pennsylvania Railroad told ad-readers all about its signal system. Baltimore & Ohio dramatized its operation in a series of adventures (all with happy endings) involving personnel and passengers. Chesapeake & Ohio shrewdly publicized itself as the road surveyed and "founded" by George Washington, made a brilliant paragraph of advertising history with its kitten "Chessie" snugly tucked in a berth ("Sleep Like a Kitten").

But with the exception of Chesapeake & Ohio, railroads did not keep up a sustained institutional advertising program, as do the automobile and tobacco industries. In 1933 they placed 96% of their space in newspapers, mostly sporadic "point-to-point" (i. e. timetable) copy.

With threats of Government ownership, increased competition from automobiles, buses, airlines, and a steady decline in passenger traffic, the railroads pulled themselves together, struck back with airconditioning, streamlining, high speeds, lower fares (TIME, May 13). The problem was not so much to popularize travel or sell individual tours as to make rail-riding look attractive once more. To do that job, 26 railroads and Pullman Co. combined for the first time in a joint institutional advertising campaign which comes to a climax next week with Railroad Week.

The 26 roads--all Western--dug into their lean purses for $450,000 to buy space in 388 newspapers, four national magazines. Typical layouts:

P: "Romance Returns to the Railroads," showing a beauteous girl, spick & span in spotless white dress, lounging happily in an air-conditioned car. (". . . Like taking a luxurious overland cruise.")

P: "Fresh as the Breath of Spring," showing the same girl perched on a trunk. ("Always fair weather aboard these trains.")

P: "Men Can Wear White Linens Now."

P: "As Quiet as the Dawn."

P: ''Mild as May on the Santa Fe."

The campaign culminates in a grand burst of ballyhoo over Railroad Week, celebrating the air-conditioning of all Western through trains, the first actual service of various streamliners. Festivities will begin June 10 at 8 a. m. when every locomotive from Chicago west, with steam up, will blast its whistle for a full minute. All the round-houses will hold open house.

Admen have been trying lately to get Eastern roads to work together in a similar "travel-by-rail" campaign, but up to last week competitive bitterness was too strong. Individual Eastern advertisements, however, follow the new trend. New York Central enticingly depicts a Repeal club-car scene ("There's more to the 20th Century than 17-hour speed"). Sauciest 1935 copy was published by up-&-coming Chesapeake & Ohio: a honeymoon couple in a lower berth, captioned "Here you are, Conductor--the certificate and two tickets on The George Washington."

--(.)--

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.