The inside front cover of this timetable “welcomes the Texas Eagles, 4 new streamliners between New York, Washington, St. Louis and the principal cities of Texas.” Though this timetable went into effect on August 29, the Texas Eagles were inaugurated on August 15. They were “more than 4 hours faster between St. Louis and Houston,” nearly 6 hours faster from San Antonio, and 2 hours faster from Dallas-Fort Worth. These times are presumably in comparison with the heavyweight Sunshine Special, which continued to operate but no longer carried through cars to New York and Washington.
Click image to download a 27.2-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.
The page before the centerfold map is an article about Fort Worth, a city just far enough away from Dallas to be relatively independent but close enough to be overshadowed by Dallas’ glory. The article notes that the B-36 bomber, the largest mass-produced plane built up to that time, was assembled in Fort Worth.
The page after the centerfold map is an article about Los Angeles. This seems strange because few people going to Los Angeles from Missouri Pacific territory would be likely to take MP to get there. From Texas they would take the Southern Pacific. From Kansas City they would take the Santa Fe. From St. Louis, they would probably take the Wabash to Kansas City and Union Pacific from there. While this page of the May 1948 timetable featured San Francisco, travelers from St. Louis or Kansas City could take the Missouri Pacific-Rio Grande-Western Pacific to the Bay Area.
The inside back cover is a colorful ad for the Sunshine Special. The illustration shows it was Dieselized by 1948 but was still a heavyweight train. For some reason, the ad includes an illustration of the steam locomotive that once pulled the train. This illustration, which also appeared on Missouri Pacific’s state flowers service plate, is attributed to William Harnden Foster (1886-1941).
Born in Massachusetts and educated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Foster became best known for paintings of hunting and fishing scenes as well as dogs. But he also painted trains, cars, and ships. One of his most famous paintings is a thrilling image of a 1909 Oldsmobile racing a New York Central train — later updated to a 1914 Oldsmobile.
It seems strange that Missouri Pacific would show this painting on its ad for the Sunshine Special, as it represents an increasingly obsolete technology. But the railroad had distributed framed prints of this painting to every station and agent along its lines and probably thought that the image was so indelibly associated with the train that a picture with Diesels alone might be confusing.
The Sunshine Special should have been on the back cover. Instead, that premiere location was used to advertise Missouri Pacific fast freight service.