Yesterday’s timetable was mostly ads and other fluff; the timetables and equipment listings fit on just three pages (plus a half a page for a condensed timetable that was totally unnecessary). D&H apparently recognized that for by 1957 its timetable had shrunk to 8 pages.

Click image to download a 3.1-MB PDF of this 8-page timetable.

The timetable still has a full-page front cover ad that was unchanged from 1954. The condensed schedules are gone, and the remaining schedules fill three pages with a lot of white space, particularly on the third page. The train that terminated at Whitehall is gone but the other trains in yesterday’s 1954 timetable remain.

The equipment list is gone so passengers wouldn’t know if their overnight train to Plattsburg or Montreal had sleeping cars. Advertisements indicated that the Laurentian had a diner and an observation-lounge car, but apparently the Montreal Limited didn’t need either of those. A page of tiny print labeled “information for travelers” was also gone. Instead of information or equipment lists, this timetable retained a page of ads that was identical to a page in the 1954 timetable.

Also retained was a page painfully describing the D&H as a “bridge line” carrying freight between two other railroads — I say painfully because it effectively admitted that the railroad had no purpose of its own such as local industry or resources other than some coal mines. As a result, the railroad was economically marginal and poorly maintained. Norfolk & Western bought it in 1968 for a mere $500,000 (about $4.5 million today) and then sold it in 1984 for the same $500,000 (just $1.5 million today), which means after inflation it lost two-thirds of its money.