In addition to the Zephyrs and the benighted Coloradan, Burlington had a couple of other trains in the Chicago-Denver corridor. One was trains 7 & 8, which are listed in the timetable as “coach only.” In one place it says “coaches only” but I suspect it only carried one coach.

Click image to download an 18.8-MB PDF of this 32-page timetable.

This must have been the “fast mail,” but it wasn’t very fast, taking around 28 hours to get between Chicago and Denver, compared with 16-1/2 for the Denver Zephyr. Of course, it was scheduled to make many more stops: I count 14 intermediate stops by the Denver Zephyr compared with 85 (including flag stops) by trains 7 & 8. Many of these stops were only minutes apart, with the train often making five or even six stops within a single hour.

The other train on the Chicago-Denver route was number 2 & 15, which went as far as Burlington on the Chicago-Denver corridor and then turned south to Quincy and Hannibal (with 15 going south and 2 going north). Burlington had a more direct route to Quincy that was 101 miles from Galesburg vs. 124 miles via Burlington. Apparently, there was a demand for travel between Burlington and other points to Quincy and Hannibal.

What was more confusing is that the route between Burlington and Hannibal had two train 15s. This train went south on that route, while a completely different train 15, the Zephyr-Rocket, went north on the same route as part of its journey from St. Louis to Minneapolis (via Rock Island between Burlington and Minneapolis). The two trains left Burlington, going in opposite directions, just 10 minutes apart from one another. I would be very surprised if no one ever got on the wrong train.

The Zephyr-Rocket‘s southbound counterpart was number 8, so the only confusion there would have been why even-numbered train 8 was going south when even-numbered train 2 was going north. While the Zephyr-Rocket had coaches, sleepers, and a combination observation-dining-lounge car, train 2 & 15 had coaches and a cafe-lounge car.