We’ve seen pocket timetables such as this one used for commuter trains or in corridors that have several trains a day. Santa Fe also issued timetable cards for individual trains. This is the first time I’ve seen a pocket timetable for just one Union Pacific transcontinental train.
Click image to download a 944-KB PDF of this tiny timetable.
By 1960, the City of Portland was doing dual duty as the City of Denver as well. The time from Chicago to Denver was 17-1/4 hours, up from 16 hours at its fastest. Total time from Chicago to Portland was 42-3/4 hours, up from 39-3/4 at its fastest. That doesn’t sound like a big difference, but UP was once able to advertise that its trains from Chicago to the West Coast took two nights and one day, but this increased it to two nights and a day-and-a-half.
Tiny as it is, the timetable is big enough to give people a few hints about what they could see along the way. From Laramie, it notes, the Snowy Range was visible to the west. At Ontario, Oregon the train crossed the Snake River (unfortunately at night in both directions). From Baker, Oregon, people could go to Sumpter Valley, which seems a strange thing to mention as in 1960 Sumpter was practically a ghost town: just 96 residents, down from more than 2,200 in 1900.
The back cover mentions a few more spots to visit, including Rocky Mountain National Park, Salt Lake City, and Yellowstone/Grand Teton. “Dude ranches, too, are plentiful in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.”
By 1960, most passengers were not riding end-to-end, at least business travelers, so padding the schedule by a couple of hours resulted in a still-respectable 42 hour timing. Eastbound, a 12:30 PM departure was much better for sightseeing, as the most scenic portion of the journey was covered before the train turned southeast to head towards Boise. Southern Idaho is mostly desert, so the passengers were not missing much scenery, except for parts of the Snake River.