This timetable has two different schedules for the Afternoon Zephyr and North Coast Limited between Chicago and the Twin Cities. From June 1 through September 26, the two trains operated as in previous timetables. But before June 1 and after September 26, the times of the westbound Afternoon Zephyr are adjusted so that it can be combined with the westbound Empire Builder while the times of the eastbound North Coast Limited are adjusted so that it can be combined with the eastbound Empire Builder.

Click image to download an 16.3-MB PDF of this 24-page timetable.

This effectively reduced the Burlington’s Chicago-Twin Cities service to four trains a day. The Empire Builder didn’t change its schedule, but it did lose its observation car in the non-summer months. The Afternoon Zephyr needed its observation car, which was also its first-class parlor car. The North Coast Limited needed its observation car, which was also its beverage lounge. The Empire Builder‘s beverage lounge was underneath its full-length dome while its observation car offered just eight seats and no beverage service so it could lose that car with little loss of passenger comfort.

One of the trains in the November 1960 system timetable not shown on yesterday’s condensed timetable went between St. Louis and Rock Island via Galesburg. The system timetable noted that Burlington had applied to discontinue that train. The train is missing from the today’s, so the application must have been approved.

The timetable is now down to 24 pages, reduced from 32 in May 1960 and 28 in November 1960. This latest compaction was accomplished by reducing the number of general information pages, eliminating some trains from the condensed pages, cutting the above-mentioned train, and eliminating some advertisements had been squeezed in the 28-page timetable. I have a copy of this timetable in my collection, but it is in pretty rough shape. Fortunately, Bryan Howell provided scans of a better copy.

One train that was dropped without saving any room in the timetable was the Coloradan. As noted here a few days ago, in 1958 this train was merged with the Nebraska Zephyr. What that really meant was that the heavyweight Coloradan was truncated from a Chicago-Denver train to an Omaha-Denver train. Residents of small towns served by the Coloradan who still wanted to take the train somewhere would have to catch coach-only train 7 or 8, which was presumably mainly a mail train.