When Great Northern introduced its streamlined Empire Builder in 1947, it used five pairs of E7 locomotives to haul the five twelve-car train. These were illustrated by five locomotive noses on the 1947 timetables. The old heavyweight Empire Builder consists became the revived Oriental Limited, and the steam locomotives used to pull this train were soon replaced by F3 Diesels.

Click image to download a 24.9-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable. Update: Cover fixed.

The cover of this 1949 timetable illustrates this contrast but does so in a slightly confusing way. The E7 locomotive, notable for having its goat logo over an orange background, is shown over the words “Oriental Limited” while the F3 locomotive, whose goat logo was on a green field, is over the words “the Streamlined Empire Builder.” As of 1949, the reverse was true: the Empire Builder was still pulled by E7s and the Oriental Limited was powered by F3s.

Why didn’t GN buy more E7s to pull the Oriental Limited? The E7s were actually delivered to the railroad two years before the streamlined passenger cars. GN put them to work pulling the heavyweight Empire Builder.

It soon learned that the E7s, which were geared to go as fast as 117 mph, were great on the prairies, but pulling heavyweight trains up mountain grades at slow speeds tended to burn out their traction motors. It hoped that problem would be eliminated with delivery of lightweight equipment but used lower-geared F3s for the heavyweight Oriental Limited.