Remember how the May 1963 timetable showed the westbound California Zephyr as a connection to a train to Hannibal, but the November 1963 timetable did not? That connection is back in this timetable (scans for which were generously provided by Bryan Howell). This is insignificant stuff, but that’s one of the few changes I can find from the May 1964 edition.
Click image to download an 15.6-MB PDF of this 24-page timetable.
Unlike the May 1964 timetable, this one didn’t delete any branchline mixed trains. In fact, it added more than a dozen routes where such service might be offered — “consult agent for details.” These included Tecumseh-Auburn, Benedict-McCool Jct., and Hildreth-Beatrice. I’ve never heard of most of these towns and I have no idea why Burlington was offering some sort of passenger service on these routes.
Perhaps the main message is that, at a time when passenger ridership was declining and some railroads were hastily trying to abandon non-performing trains, Burlington was still holding firm. Burlington’s president, Harry Murphy, was a Ralph Budd disciple who supported passenger operations as long as he could in the belief that, if the railroad offered top-notch service, the riders would support it.
Harry Murphy wasn’t a one man band. Herb Wallace, the number two man in the passenger traffic department, was a key part of CBQ’s pro-passenger stance, and Murphy’s assistant (and heir apparent) Julius Alms was as well. Unfortunately Alms passed in 1964, and Lew Menk became president in 1966 IIRC. Menk was not a passenger train guy, but he also had his eye on the Northern Pacific presidency and subsequent Hill Lines merger, so he came and went pretty quickly and thus did not have much time to pursue the train-off proceedings he wanted to.
Strangely enough, when Myron Christy of the Western Pacific was begging the other two roads involved to support the discontinuance of the California Zephyr, Menk wrote him a letter stating that CBQ would probably take an adversarial position in any train-off action. CBQ, it turns out, was still making money from the CZ even at that late date.