Though dated May, this timetable went into effect on April 29, exactly five weeks before the Great Northern replaced its heavyweight Oriental Limited with the streamlined Western Star, making it the first Northwest railroad to have not one but two transcontinental streamliners. This barely rates a mention in this Burlington timetable, which only notes under the equipment listing for the Oriental Limited that, “Starting June 3, this train will be the streamlined Western Star.”

Click image to download a 22.4-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

That’s really all that was necessary. Even though streamliners were associated with faster speeds, initially at least the Western Star was run on exactly the same timetable as its predecessor. As a result, in 1951, the Western Star, like the Oriental Limited, was combined with the Black Hawk between St. Paul and Chicago.

The back cover ad is different from the one used in yesterday’s timetable. It encourages people to “Go West” via Burlington to Colorado, Yellowstone, Glacier, dude ranches, the Pacific Northwest, and sunny California. The ad is highlighted with red and is accompanied by a monotoned sketch showing a pair of hikers waving at a pair of horseback riders. The horseback riders ignore them because, after all, anyone who couldn’t afford to rent horses is probably beneath them, the type of people who went coach instead of Pullman.