Since 1950, Burlington had been in the habit of issuing two system timetables per year, generally one dated May that usually went into effect near the end of April and one dated November that usually went into effect near the end of October. So this timetable, which says it went into effect on January 28, is an anomaly.
Click image to download an 14.3-MB PDF of this 24-page timetable.
One possibility is that one of Burlington’s partner railroads, such as GN, NP, D&RGW, WP, or CRI&P, changed the schedule of one of trains they shared. But I couldn’t find any differences in the schedules of these trains between the November 1961 timetable and this one. In fact, I could find few changes in any trains at all.
The one change I did find, and it is a minor one, was that a train that was listed in November running between St. Joseph and Brookfield Missouri is missing from the February menu. In its place is a Continental Trailways schedule for a bus from Brookfield to Cameron, which didn’t go all the way to St. Joseph. It seems unlikely that this almost trivial change would be enough to get Burlington to issue a completely new system timetable, but apparently it did.
This one covers February 1 through April 30. A look at the May 1962 timetable might reveal why CBQ felt the need to issue what boils down to an interim timetable, e.g. expected combining of some trains that served basically the same purpose, or perhaps summer schedule changes on the popular long distance trains. Or maybe there were train off proceedings that were expected to be adjudicated before the May timetable was issued.