# passenger car linen ID



## JNXT 7707 (May 5, 2013)

Anyone familiar with the linens and cloths used in passenger rail service? Someone asked me if I could identify this by railroad. The only background was that it came from someone that used to work for a railroad in the Chicago area, which doesn't narrow it down much!


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## mopac (Feb 24, 2011)

The design looks like an arrow. So I googled arrow passenger trains. Many roads
had arrow in the passenger train name. N&W had powhaton arrow, pensy had the
red arrow, NKP had an arrow passenger train. The road in Chicago with arrow was
the milwaukee road. It was called The Arrow. That's my guess.


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## mopac (Feb 24, 2011)

It might not be. I found an old photo of an old Milwaukee Road sign advertising
The Arrow and it was a different emblem so I don't know. I did not realize so many
different roads used arrow in their passenger train names. I even checked ebay for
passenger train linens and towels. Not much there. I don't think many survived.


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## JNXT 7707 (May 5, 2013)

mopac said:


> It might not be. I found an old photo of an old Milwaukee Road sign advertising
> The Arrow and it was a different emblem so I don't know. I did not realize so many
> different roads used arrow in their passenger train names. I even checked ebay for
> passenger train linens and towels. Not much there. I don't think many survived.


Yeah this might be a long search! For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was the CB&Q - for no other reason than the arrow tip looks like the ones on their E7s. I imagine this is going to be a learning experience. I have heard that these things are very collectable (and I can vouch for it by the prices I see whenever there's one in an antique store!) so there are bound to be collectors that know. Trick will be to find them.

EDIT: Actually it's hard to know at the moment exactly what these cloths are called. I've found "railroad towels" and "railroad linens" under ebay listings, but not anything that has this streamlined graphics style. Thinking they may be those headrest covers but no hits on that term at all. Seems like there was a special term for those but my memory has lost it..


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