The Milwaukee Road issued this timetable with the inauguration of its new “speedlined” Olympian Hiawatha on June 29, 1947. To compete with Great Northern, which had introduced its fully streamlined Empire Builder four months before, the Milwaukee hastily put the Oly Hi into service before Pullman had been able to deliver streamlined sleeping cars, including the famous Sky Top observation cars. For first-class passengers, the train used heavyweight sleepers until early 1949.
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The timetable also reintroduces the Columbian, which had been cancelled in the early part of the Depression. The revived train used equipment from the Olympian and operated on the Olympian‘s former schedule, which took about 12 hours longer than the Olympian Hiawatha‘s 45-hour Chicago-Seattle schedule.
The 1947 Olympian Hiawatha included a diner, a Tip-Top Grill car, one heavyweight sleeping car with six sections and six double bedrooms; a heavyweight observation-lounge-sleeping car with three compartments and two drawing rooms; three streamlined coaches; two streamlined Touralux sleeping cars; and finally an unusual streamlined car that was half Touralux with eight sections and half coach with 20 seats. This car was designated for women and children only. Passengers in the Touralux cars wouldn’t have access to the observation car, which would have left the observation lounge pretty empty with a maximum of 36 passengers to support it.
In contrast, the 1947 Columbian had two full sleeping cars plus an observation-lounge-sleeper; only one tourist sleeper; and three coaches. The train offered a full diner but did not have a grill car like the Tip-Top car, which would have been welcomed by coach passengers. While coach and tourist sleeper passengers were allowed to use the diners, the prices in grill cars were substantially lower due to the use of paper instead of cloth table cloths and napkins and similar economies.
After the lightweight sleepers were delivered in 1949, the Olympian Hiawatha carried as many as four coaches, three Touralux cars, three first-class sleepers, and the Sky Top car which included eight bedrooms, plus of course a diner and grill car.
This timetable also shows schedules for several other trains, including the Morning Hiawatha between Chicago and Minneapolis. The Afternoon Hiawatha‘s westbound schedule is shown without an identifying name, but the eastbound schedule is missing entirely. The schedules also show milk-run trains between Minneapolis and Marmarth, ND (which had the same numbers as the Morning Hiawatha even though it didn’t connect with that train in Minneapolis); Miles City and Harlowton, Montana (a three-days-a-week mixed train); and between Butte and Spokane. These local trains would soon disappear from the timetables.