The city-of-everywhere Gold Coast, which was included on yesterday’s timetable, is gone from this one. The columns used to display it were filled on this timetable with the National Parks Special (which Union Pacific timetables called the Yellowstone Special), a train from Chicago to West Yellowstone that also sent cars to Oakland (on the San Francisco Overland and Los Angeles (on a train that isn’t named on this timetable but was the City of St. Louis).
Click image to download a 26.9-MB PDF of this 44-page timetable.
The National Parks Special only operated on Saturdays from June 18 to August 27. Its Los Angeles connection, the City of St. Louis probably isn’t named on this timetable because, unlike other City trains, it didn’t use the C&NW for any part of its route.
The back cover briefly describes ten escorted tours to Yellowstone, Colorado, southern Utah, California, and the Pacific Northwest. It includes a coupon people can use to get a copy of a summer tours booklet similar to this one (which is for 1952 but has a cover similar to the one shown in the ad).
With Pullmans, the tours ranged in price from $180 for an 8-day tour (about $2,100 today or about $260 per day) to $366 for a 14-day tour (about $4,200 or $300 a day today). The cheapest tour via coach is $151, which is still about $1,750 ($220 per day) in today’s money. The most expensive tour didn’t have a coach option.
I have no first hand knowledge of the tours that UP (and undoubtedly the other western roads) ran, but it seems like a pleasant way to see the country. Even the supposedly anti-passenger SP ran tours and special trains right to the end. Kind of makes you wonder if there might have been a future for some kind of hybrid passenger rail system, with Amtrak fulfilling basic transportation needs, while allowing the freight railroads to run leisure and excursion trains as demand warranted.