The inside front cover of this timetable advertises “beautiful new planetarium-dome coaches” for the Texas Eagle. The illustration accompanying the ad strangely shows saguaro cactus, which doesn’t grow anywhere in Missouri Pacific territory.

Click image to download a 24.7-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

The page before the centerfold map features Oklahoma, which it says is “no. 9 in a series of color pages featuring the states served by Missouri Pacific lines.” The centerfold map shows that, including Tennessee, which MP reached only by entering Memphis, and Mississippi, which MP reached only by entering Natchez, the railroad went through eleven states, so there must have been eleven in this series.

The page after the map describes MP’s train-radio network, noting that “At the end of 1951, 338 locomotives and
300 cabooses were radio equipped” and that it planned to have all of its freight and passenger locomotives so equipped by the end of 1952. While interesting to passengers, it is more obviously self-serving than the earlier timetables, which devoted this page to describing some major city along the route.

This timetable is unusual for ones from the 1950s in that the inside back cover doesn’t list freight schedules. However, it’s still an ad for freight service.

The eight tinted pages of this issue use red and green. Sidebars discuss such topics as Texas resorts, Colorado winter sports, and Mexico. Three tinted pages in back show Pullman accommodations; MP lacked the imagination to use tinting on a fourth page.

Other half-pages are devoted to some cartoons, quizzes, and more town name histories. Despite my complaints about a lack of creativity in these issues from the early 1950s, these were still the most interesting timetables in the railroad world at the time, at least in the United States.