Northern Pacific’s timetable shockingly dropped from 28 pages in its 1966 timetables to a mere 8 pages in 1967. The main difference is the deletion of material not directly related to NP schedules, including one page of “general information for travelers,” the three-page station index, three pages of connecting trains, four pages of ticket prices, and several ads. The mainline timetable that compared the times of the North Coast Limited, Mainstreeter, and trains 3 and 4 has also been deleted, saving four pages. In addition, the two-page centerfold map has been reduced to a third of a page.
Click image to download a 5.0-MB PDF of this timetable.
There only major change in train service was the elimination of the NP train between the Twin Cities and the Twin Ports of Duluth, MN-Superior, WI. In the mid-1950s, NP, GN, and Soo Line offered a total of five trains a day on this route, but NP went from two trains to one in the late 1950s and Soo dropped its single train in 1961. By 1967, only GN continued to serve this route with two daily trains, the Gopher and the Badger (the mascots of the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin).
Although this may seem like a major retrenchment, it was really a big improvement, as a lot of thought seems to have been made in redesigning the readability of the timetable. The color coding and weeding out everything but the schedules was pretty innovative, especially as it didn’t look like the timetable had changed much at all over the decades. The 1926 issue wasn’t too much different than the 1966 one. Even with the use of color, the 8-page timetable must have been much cheaper to print. Looking over the previous NP timetables you posted, what a graphic illustration of how railroad passenger service dwindled over the years!