Big Sky Blue Map

This is a beautiful map, unfolding to be three feet long with graphics showing points of interest and topography, one-sentence descriptions of major cities, and the times the Empire Builder stopped in those cities in both eastbound and westbound directions. Still, it is quite a come-down from GN’s 1949 along-the-way booklet, which was 24 pages filled with photos and one-paragraph descriptions of nearly every stop on Great Northern routes.

Click image to download a 8.6-MB PDF of this brochure.

Unlike the 1949 booklet, which covered routes to Duluth, Billings, Butte, and Vancouver, BC, this 1967 version is exclusively for the Empire Builder. As far as I know, GN did not have a similar brochure for the Western Star, which suggests the railway was no longer even pretending to treat the two trains as equals. Update: GN did have a Western Star route guide, but it was much briefer. I’ll present it here in May, 2018.


Leave a Reply