Time Machine: Oatmeal train crossed country promoting Quaker Oats

When the executives of the Cedar Rapids company that would become Quaker Oats were looking for a way to promote their oatmeal product in the late 1800s, they came up with an innovative idea: a train tour featuring decorations, flyers and free samples.

The executives at Cereal Milling Co., including Walter W. Douglas, thought that Quaker Oats cereal had been sufficiently promoted in the Eastern United States, so they turned their attention west. The company outfitted and loaded a special train with Quaker Oats. On the morning of July 22, 1890, it set out from Cedar Rapids en route to San Francisco.

“It will consist of fifteen cars loaded with Quaker Oats and consigned to San Francisco jobbers,” The Gazette reported. “The cars were being decorated this morning (July 21) under the direction of Richmond Smith. On one side is the inscription, ‘Solid train of Quaker Oats to California’ and on the other is these words, ‘From Cereal Milling Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’ ”

Richmond Smith was the company agent in charge of the trip as far as Los Angeles. Two assistants were assigned to travel with the train for its full route. Their job was to supervise distribution of the samples and flyers.

The train, which traveled only during daylight hours, went over the Northwestern Railroad to Council Bluffs, over the Kansas City, St. Joe & Council Bluffs Railroad to Atchison, Kan., over the Santa Fe route via Kansas City to Los Angeles, and over the Southern Pacific to San Francisco.

Local agents along the way reported to Smith and traveled with him through their territories, assisting him in dispensing “hospitality and Quaker Oats.”

From Los Angeles to San Francisco, Agent P. Mertel was in charge.

The train’s decorated cars were central to the cereal company’s advertising, which promoted the train as “the most artistically and beautifully decorated freight train that has ever been behind (a) locomotive.”

A collision near Boone

The journey wasn’t entirely smooth. The day after departing from Cedar Rapids, on July 23, the train began its travels in Boone in central Iowa. It had gone only eight miles toward the small community of Moingona when it collided with an eastbound stock train.

Early reports were dire, indicating that engines and train cars were wrecked. A later report painted a brighter picture. No one was hurt, only one car was slightly damaged and the train would be delayed only three hours.

The train continued on its journey with no further incidents. At each stop along the way, souvenirs and samples were distributed.

The train finally arrived in San Francisco at 4 a.m. Aug. 3.

Smith returned home to Cedar Rapids and his infant daughter. His wife had died weeks after giving birth in May, and Smith had left the child in the care of his in-laws, the Thomas Devendorf family, while he traveled west with the train. In November, Smith himself died and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Another train goes west

After the success of the first train trip, executives decided to try it again. Fourteen decorated railroad freight cars set out from Cedar Rapids on April 12, 1892, destined for Portland, Ore., and Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. The Quaker Oats-laden cars were accompanied by a couple of cabooses that held free sample packages and promotion cards. Traveling with the train were American Cereal Co. officers W.J. Coats, W.E. Suits and William Dutton.

J.E. Hannegan, general passenger agent of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railway, oversaw putting the whole advertising venture together.

The train’s arrival in Minneapolis was heralded in a local paper: “All day long thousands of admiring visitors inspected this unique display of business push and enterprise. Every car was beautifully decorated, hardly a square inch of plain surface being visible, not with cheaply gotten up cotton in flashy colors was it festooned but with beautifully illuminated and richly painted sign work. The train was artistically made beautiful, the whole effort making a startling combination of color.”

Each car carried 250 cases of oatmeal, with each case containing 36 2-pound packages of Quaker Oats.

By the time the train arrived in Helena, Mont., for a one-hour stop, about 15,000 samples had been handed out. An estimated 50,000 samples were expected to be distributed by the time it got to Portland.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer mentioned the train that had traveled west two years before, but noted the company had not introduced its brand to the Puget Sound area. The train arrived in Spokane, Wash., on April 20 and handed out samples from the cabooses. It then left that afternoon for Portland.

A train trip to New York

The last Quaker promotional train of the 19th century headed east to New York City in June 1897. Again it traveled only in daylight hours.

This one pulled 25 cars. Along with free oatmeal samples, a “Cereal Cook Book” was given to those who visited the train.

The train passed through Passaic, N.J., and Middletown, N.Y., where it picked up more cars. The Argus of Middletown said there were 32 loaded cars as well as a passenger coach from which “an old Quaker” distributed samples.

The train wasn’t the only advertising plan — there were wagons, too. “For the past few days much attention has been attracted by a number of elegant advertising wagons on our streets,” the March 19, 1897, Baltimore Sun said. “These are the far-famed Quaker Oats sample wagons, engaged in distributing attractive free sample packages of that famous cereal food.”

In later years, all three of the U.S. train trips were rolled into one historic memory. The one most often referred to as the only Quaker train was the 1892 trip to the Pacific Northwest.

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