Although the Dotsero Cutoff had yet to be built, the first schedule in this timetable showed how to take the Burlington to California via the Rio Grande and Western Pacific. The map accompanying the schedule shows Denver-Pueblo-Salt Lake City in a perfectly straight east-west line even though Pueblo was in fact 120 miles due south of Denver, most of which would be saved when the Dotsero Cutoff opened in a few years.
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The next pages show routes from Chicago and St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest via Burlington, Northern Pacific, and Great Northern. About a year before this timetable was made, Northern Pacific jumped on the all-Pullman bandwagon by taking coaches and tourist sleepers off the North Coast Limited, timing the coach-and-Pullman Pacific Express to leave Chicago at the same time as the North Coast Limited and adding the Alaskan so there would be two daily coach trains. With the Yellowstone Comet (which only went as far west as Yellowstone), NP had four daily trains heading west at least as far as Montana while Great Northern still had only two, the Empire Builder and Oriental Limited.
We’ll never know what Great Northern would have done in response, as the Depression forced NP to cut the Pacific Limited and return coaches to the North Coast Limited. We do know that Great Northern was planning to have a section of the Empire Builder go to California via Bend, Oregon and the Western Pacific when it completed that line in 1931, but again the Depression prevented that from happening.
On its own rails, Burlington offered five trains a day between Chicago and Omaha/Lincoln, three of which — the Aristocrat, Denver Limited, and Overland Express — went on to Denver. It also had two trains a day between St. Louis and Denver and two a day to Billings and Cody.
The cover shown above is actually on the back, while the front cover is an ad for a Black Hills detour: a two-day rail and bus tour that could be done on the way to Billing, Cody, or other Northwest points for just $29.50 (about $550 today) for transportation, meals, and lodging. Says the ad, “The Burlington is the only railroad which affords facilities wherewith to combine a tour of the Black Hills with a visit to Yellowstone Park, Glacier National Park, or the Pacific Northwest.” Wherewith? Who writes like that?