Since yesterday’s timetable, which immediately preceded this one, featured Arkansas in the “first of a series” of Missouri Pacific states, and Arkansas is at the beginning of the alphabet, I would have expected the next state to be Colorado, second in an alphabetical listing of states served by Missouri Pacific. Instead, today’s timetable focuses on Illinois while Colorado would be in the March 1951 timetable.

Click image to download an 26.0-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.

Instead of illustrating this article with a picture of Chicago, MP used an image of Illinois’ capitol building, as if all capitols don’t look something alike. The capitol building would be featured again in the December 1956 Illinois entry into the series on state capitols. At least they used a different image for this one.

The page after the centerfold map describes how Missouri Pacific is using “electronic communications,” meaning radios and telephones, to “speed train and yard operations.” While that might seem mundane today, radio dispatching of trains was cutting-edge stuff in 1950.

The inside front cover is an ad for low-cost coach fares on the Eagles. The back cover announces that 1951 would be the centennial of the first efforts to construct the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, MP’s predecessor and the first railroad built west of the Mississippi. The illustrations accompanying the article were by Frank Nuderscher, whose work was previously seen on the inside back cover of the April 1947 timetable, when MoPac timetables still had interesting inside back covers.

While the inside back cover of today’s timetable is once again devoted to boring freight schedules, half-page articles in the timetable discuss the names of U.S. presidents, the history of town names, the history of Pullman car names, and Mexico. Other half-page ads announced that Missouri Pacific had ordered new locomotives and more dome cars for its passenger trains.