Ranging from Chicago to Denver and from the Twin Cities to Galveston, the Rock Island Railroad had an extensive network of Midwestern rail lines. The equipment pages of this timetable list 18 named trains and at least a dozen more … Continue reading
This timetable doesn’t say “condensed,” but like so many others in the late 1960s it has shrunk to a fold-out brochure rather than a stapled booklet. Instead of being three eight-inch panels wide, however, it is three-and-one-half (or, put another … Continue reading
This is the condensed version of the 28-page timetable shown yesterday. Tables for all ten of GN’s trains, from the Empire Builder and Western Star to the Portland pool train and the Havre-Great Falls branch line train, fit on the … Continue reading
After using the color photo of the Empire Builder in Glacier Park on the cover of just two timetables–summer and winter, 1966–the railway decided to rebrand itself using Big Sky Blue in place of the orange-and-green train in that photo. … Continue reading
In 1966, GN replaced its long-running blue timetable cover with this beautiful photograph of the Empire Builder along the south boundary of Glacier National Park. Note that the locomotives are painted in the pre-1962 colors rather than the later simplified … Continue reading
In just two years, Great Northern shed all but three of the 25 local and branch line trains found in its 1960 timetable. The only such trains remaining in 1962 were from Barnesville to Crookston, MN, Breckenridge, MN to Minot, … Continue reading
Great Northern’s summer, 1960 timetable had a similar cover to the 1957 timetable, but that similarity disguises dramatic changes in the schedules for some of the railway’s major trains. Most important, starting in the summer of 1960, trains 3 & … Continue reading
Starting in 1957, GN replaced the orange-and-green timetable covers it used in the early 1950s with this blue-and-red cover featuring Great Domes on the Incomparable Empire Builder. Inside, there are some font changes and slight changes in schedules, but the … Continue reading
America’s railroads carried more passengers in 1944 than any other year in history: four-and-a-half times as many passenger miles as in 1937, eight times as many as 1932, and more than twice as many as in 1920, the previous peak. … Continue reading
This simple card lists 1938 fares from Portland to Chicago on the Empire Builder. The one-way coach fare was $39.50–more than $500 today. A lower berth in tourist class was $56.96, or about $750 today, while a lower berth in … Continue reading