Like the 1949 timetable shown here a few days ago, this one has 88 pages. CN would continue to publish 88-page timetables for about another year.

Click image to download a 57.1-MB PDF of this 88-page timetable.

The back cover advertises CN’s premiere transcontinental train, the Continental Limited. While the train consisted mostly of heavyweight equipment, the ad mentions roomettes, duplex roomettes, and coaches with roller-bearings, suggesting that at least some cars were either lightweights or were heavyweights upgraded with more modern features. The train’s equipment list on page 3 indicates most of the cars went either between Montreal and Winnipeg or between Winnipeg and Vancouver or other western points, suggesting that it was really two different trains with a couple of through sleeping cars but no through coaches — coach passengers had to change in Winnipeg.

A relatively small ad hidden on page 69 says that CN had ordered “359 smart new passenger cars for service all across Canada.” As an advertisement in the March 1954 National Geographic said, this was a “record purchase,” a record that would stand until Amtrak ordered 492 Amfleet cars in the late 1970s. Among other things, these cars would allow CN to supplement the mostly heavyweight Continental Limited with the mostly lightweight Super Continental on April 24, 1955.

The front cover shows CN’s Diesel-powered, all-sleeping car Ocean Limited, which went between Montreal and Halifax. The eight cars that make up the train appear streamlined, but most if not all of them are heavyweight cars whose rooflines have been smoothed-out to have a streamlined appearance. Despite CN’s record order of new passenger cars, it would continue to use streamlined heavyweight cars on many of its trains as long as it operated passenger services.