Burlington’s condensed timetables of the 1950s had ten tables, led by the Chicago-Denver corridor in table 1. This table shows six zephyrs and three other trains: two going as far as Galesville (and continuing on to Kansas City), one as far as Omaha (which returned only as far as Burlington), one as far as Lincoln, and four trains going all the way to Denver. In addition to the Denver Zephyr and California Zephyr, the Denver trains included the Coloradan and unnamed, coach-only trains 7 & 14.
Click image to download a 2.9-MB PDF of this timetable, which was contributed by Ellery Goode.
The Coloradan was a heavyweight train that included a dining-parlor car that only went between Chicago and Lincoln. It also had a sleeping car between Chicago and Lincoln that went on to Great Falls, Montana on train 43 (shown in timetable 4), which started in Kansas City and was once known as the Adventureland. In Great Falls, the train met Great Northern’s Western Star. Train 43 also met the North Coast Limited in Billings, giving people from both Chicago and Kansas City two alternate routes to the Pacific Northwest.
The coach-only train may have operated mainly to provide Iowa and Nebraska passengers with daylight service, as the Zephyrs and Coloradan passed through most of these cities at night. It may have also been the fast mail train.
The Chicago-Omaha train, 15, was once known as the Fast Mail. In 1951 it only had coaches for passengers, but this timetable says that it included a parlor car and diner from Chicago to Burlington. The 1951 timetable shows it balanced by train 14, but that train, which started in Denver, actually balanced the coach-only train 7. Train 32, from Omaha to Burlington, was not listed in 1951.
So what happened to the coaches, diners, and parlor cars that were apparently piling up in Burlington? They must have returned to Chicago on the Coloradan, which left Burlington 35 minutes after train 32 arrived.
Table 2 shows Burlington’s other major corridor, Chicago-Twin Cities, which had six trains a day each way: Morning and Afternoon Zephyrs, Empire Builder, North Coast Limited, overnight Blackhawk (which served as the Chicago connection with the Western Star and Mainstreeter), and six-day-a-week coach-only trains 45 and 52.
The coach-only trains on this route are also a puzzle. Like the Blackhawk, they went overnight in both directions, leaving Chicago and Minneapolis about three hours before the Blackhawk but arriving at the opposite termini an hour later. They made a lot more stops than any other trains on the timetable, but since they did it late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, they weren’t very convenient for residents of the towns they served.
In any case, timetable 3 is Chicago-Kansas City; 4 shows Kansas City-Billings; 5 is St. Louis-Minneapolis (via Rock Island from Burlington to Minneapolis); 6 is Kansas City-Lincoln; 7 is an odd little train between Denver and Alliance, Nebraska; 8 shows an all-Burlington (but much slower) route between St. Louis and the Twin Cities; and 9 is Denver to Houston. Finally, table 10 shows Denver to Cody and Billings, only the trains didn’t go to Cody any more and buses went to Cody only during the summer months.