The inside front cover of this timetable is another ad for the Thrift-T-Sleeper service on the Colorado Eagle. But page 9 and the back cover offer a new wrinkle with an announcement that Baltimore & Ohio’s Slumbercoach from Washington to St. Louis would continue on to Houston and San Antonio. Passengers from those cities could take a Slumbercoach to Washington or just to St. Louis.

Click image to download a 20.9-MB PDF of this 40-page timetable.

Slumbercoach fares were comparable to the lower berth fares in the Thrift-T-Sleeper (which were $6 plus coach fare between St. Louis and Denver). The single-room Slumbercoach was $6 plus coach fare between Houston and St. Louis and $7 plus coach between San Antonio and St. Louis. As I suggested yesterday, the Thrift-T-Sleeper fares were probably an attempt to mimic Slumbercoach fares on the Colorado train.

I was surprised that the June 1959 timetable featured here yesterday included a full-page ad for passenger service from Houston to Brownsville, and even more surprised that this timetable has another one.

This route had two trains a day in 1959, a day train was called the Valley Eagle and the overnight train called the Pioneer. The three main cities on the route, other than Houston, were Harlingen, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville, and between them they had fewer than 250,000 residents in 1959. The biggest of these, Corpus Christi, was 17 miles off the main line and wasn’t served by the overnight train.

The ads were unsuccessful in promoting ridership, as the Valley Eagle was discontinued in 1962. The Pioneer lasted until 1965, but it had lost its name and become a coach-only train by 1964.

Missouri Pacific made another attempt to boost ridership by offering free coffee. According to a small ad on page 14, trains with diner or grill cars would serve coffee “with Missouri Pacific’s compliments every day at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm.”