Background:

On this page we present magazine advertisements featuring "Chessie the Cat", one of the best know railroad advertising mascots.  Chessie, named after the railroad merger combining the assets of the Chesapeake and Ohio and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads was a fixture in their ads starting in 1933.  Future ads even featured her "Old Man" and kittens.

We have heard two stories on how Chessie came about.  The first is that an advertising man for the railroad saw a kitten sleeping next to a newspaper and came up with the idea of "Sleep like a kitten" to promote the comfort of their passenger service.  The other story is that Chessie was an abandoned kitten rescued by one of their train crew who named her after the railroad.   For us, the second story sounds much more appealing!