We’ve previously seen 1878 timetables for the International & Great Northern, Iron Mountain, and Texas & Pacific. By 1885, all three along with the Missouri-Kansas-Texas were firmly controlled by Jay Gould, who operated them together with Missouri Pacific. This timetable, however, focuses on core Missouri Pacific trains.

Click image to download a 12.9-MB PDF of this timetable, which is from the David Rumsey map collection.

Most important were two trains a day between St. Louis and Omaha, thus reaching the Union Pacific and its connection to California. The timetable calls these “Day Express” and “Night Express” even though both required an overnight trip; the day express was overnight between Kansas City and Omaha while the night express was overnight between St. Louis and Kansas City.

In Sedalia, Missouri, the trains split with some cars going to Ft. Worth. At Denison, that train split again with some cars going to Houston over the Houston & Texas Central (which was not a Gould line). At Ft. Worth, the train connected with a Texas & Pacific train to El Paso where it met the SP going to California.

Back on the main line, at Atchison, the night express split again with some cars going to Lenora, Kansas on the line that, in a few years, would be extended to Pueblo, Colorado.

Other than the Southern Pacific connection over Texas & Pacific tracks, this timetable doesn’t have much information about trains on the other Gould railroads. The International & Great Northern’s connection between St.Louis and Houston was shorter than Missouri Pacific’s but isn’t included in a timetable. A panel about through car service mentions a train from Ft. Worth to New Orleans over T&P tracks, but no timetable is included.

Even for the routes that are included, nearly all of the timetables in the brochure are for westbound trains. The exception is one panel that shows a condensed timetable for trains going to St. Louis from Omaha, Lenora, and St. Joseph, though not from El Paso or Ft. Worth.