A stately parade of Burlington streamliners left Chicago each day in 1956 for the Twin Cities. At 8:45 am, the Morning Zephyr departed Union Station with the goal of arriving in St. Paul in just 6-1/4 hours, for an average speed of 68 miles per hour. The train averaged nearly 82 miles per hour over the 113 miles between East Dubuque and LaCrosse despite making an intervening stop in Prairie du Chien.
Click image to download a 2.0-MB PDF of this timetable.
Next was the North Coast Limited, leaving at 11:30 am and taking a half hour longer to St. Paul than the Zephyr. At 2:00 pm, the Empire Builder departed; though leaving two-and-one-half hours after its Northern Pacific rival, it was scheduled to arrive in Seattle 10 minutes sooner. At 4:15 pm the Afternoon Zephyr left Chicago on a schedule matching that of its morning counterpart.
The slow, unstreamlined, and unnamed mail-and-express train #45 was scheduled to depart at 8:30 pm. Offering no on-board services other than coach seats, the train would make dozens of stops that the others skipped and would take more than twice as long to get to St. Paul as the Zephyrs. As of October 1953, it also didn’t operate on Saturday nights.
Finally, at 11:10 pm, the combined Black Hawk/Mainstreeter/Western Star left Union Station as train #47. Making just one more stop than the Zephyrs, this train nonetheless made the trip to St. Paul in a leisurely 8-1/6 hours for an average speed of 52 mph, mainly because people destined for the Twin Cities wouldn’t want to be rousted out of their beds at 5:00 am and Twin Cities residents destined for North Dakota or Montana wouldn’t want to catch their train at 6 am.
The eastbound trains were not so evenly spaced out. The North Coast Limited led the way, leaving St. Paul at 7:00 am, followed by the Empire Builder a mere 15 minutes later. The Morning Zephyr left an hour and ten minutes after that, and then there was more than an eight-hour gap before the Afternoon Zephyr at 4:30 pm. Mail-and-express train #52 left St. Paul at 8:15, and the combined Black Hawk/Mainstreeter/Western Star, operating as train #48, left at 11:45 pm.
This folder has as much space as three pages of a regular timetable, which allowed room for connections at Chicago and Minneapolis, a map showing cities that are “approximately opposite the same stations in the adjoining southbound timetable,” and, for some reason, a schedule for Scenic Stage Lines buses between Savanna and Moline.