Issued about three months after yesterday’s timetable, this fixes one of the problems with the combined Coloradan/Nebraska Zephyr. In this timetable, the combined trains merge or separate in Omaha instead of Lincoln. This means the westbound Nebraska Zephyr could proceed to Lincoln after only a 30-minute delay in Omaha instead of the hour and fifty minutes in the February timetable. Eastbound, passengers from Lincoln only had to endure a 22-minute delay in Omaha instead of the two hours and fifty minutes of the February schedule. The new delays were still longer than the pre-merger schedules, which had a 10-minute wait in Omaha westbound and 15 minutes eastbound.

Click image to download a 23.8-MB PDF of this 36-page timetable.

The pre-merger Nebraska Zephyr made seven stops that the Coloradan skipped, while the Coloradan made five stops east of Lincoln that were skipped by the Zephyr. The merged train made all of those stops, which further increased the time taken by either train.

The reduced layover in Omaha meant that the Zephyr‘s Chicago-Lincoln time was 11-1/3 hours in this timetable, which was 1-1/2 hours faster than February’s time but, thanks to the extra stops, still two hours slower than the pre-February time. Lincoln to Chicago was 10-1/3 hours in this timetable, the same as in February and 50 minutes longer than before February.

The schedule in today’s timetable lists the Coloradan and Nebraska Zephyr in two separate columns instead of a single column as in February. But this was deceptive: no cars actually went through from Chicago to Denver. The equipment list for the Coloradan says that it included a dining-parlor car (“car P-11”) and reclining seat coaches from Chicago to Omaha, but by an amazing coincidence the Nebraska Zephyr equipment list shows the exact same cars. All the other cars on the Coloradan only went between Omaha and Denver.

So it really was two different trains, one between Chicago and Lincoln and one between Omaha and Denver. Anyone who wanted to go from east of Omaha west of Lincoln or from west of Lincoln to east of Omaha was required to change trains in Omaha, not just change to different cars on the same train, which appeared to be possible in the February timetable. The Coloradan/Nebraska Zephyr may have served a useful purpose in stopping at a few towns (I count eleven) that were skipped by the Denver Zephyr and California Zephyr, but it was not a through train from Chicago to Denver.

I am grateful to Bryan Howell for providing scans of this timetable.