This timetable is only 16 pages long, cut from 20 in yesterday’s October 1967 timetable. Today’s timetable saved two pages by cutting the condensed schedules for all but the transcons (CZ, EB, NCL, WS, and Mainstreeter). Another page was saved by eliminating the list of connecting trains in Chicago and other cities. Finally, the 1967 timetable had a back cover ad that was cut from this one.

Click image to download an 9.0-MB PDF of this 16-page timetable.

The biggest loss I see is the Kansas City Zephyr, the daytime counterpart to the overnight American Royal Zephyr. However, a train with the same numbers, 35 & 36, continued to operate as the Quincy Local between Chicago and Quincy. It carried a dinette, while the American Royal, which once carried sleepers and a diner-lounge, was reduced to just coaches.

In a new twist in the Chicago-Twin Cities corridor, the westbound Afternoon Zephyr operated as a separate train from the Empire Builder and North Coast Limited on Fridays and Saturdays only. This allowed for a 4:55 pm departure so that weekend travelers could spend the day in Chicago and still get to the Twin Cities before midnight. Burlington should have done this seven days a week, which would have allowed the North Coast Limited to keep its observation-lounge car.

Timetable designers almost saved another page by combining the full Chicago-Denver corridor into one page. Previous editions broke this up into Chicago-Omaha and Omaha-Denver pages. Most of the stations shown on these pages were not served by the Zephyrs, and with the elimination of local trains such as the Coloradan they just took up space in the timetable. However, the timetable still needed a second to show all of the schedule’s footnotes. The remainder of that page included the Denver-Boulder bus schedule and a filler advertisement, which was pretty much the only ad in this timetable.