Issued in the midst of the Second World War, this timetable predictably has a number of patriotic statements and ads. But it also has lots of interesting information about Milwaukee Road trains.
Click image to download a 42.2-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable.
The four pages of equipment lists note that, “Unless designated ‘Pullman,’ all cars are Milwaukee Road owned and operated.” Milwaukee was the last major railroad to operate its own sleeping cars and in this timetable it still operated them on the Chicago-Mason City Marquette, Chicago-Minneapolis Minnesota Marquette, Minneapolis-Aberdeen numbers 5 & 6, Butte-Spokane numbers 7 & 8, Chicago-Rapid City Sioux, Chicago-Minocqua Tomahawk, and through Omaha-Aberdeen and Des Moines-Sioux City sleepers.
Pullman operated sleeping cars on the Chicago-Minneapolis Pioneer Limited, Chicago-Calumet Copper Country Limited, the Olympian, Milwaukee-Kansas City Southwest Limited, and Chicago-Omaha Arrow. It appears that Milwaukee allowed Pullman to operate the most lucrative routes while the railroad kept the marginal routes for itself. This didn’t make much sense if the point of self-operating sleeping cars rather than contracting them out to Pullman was to keep the revenues within the company.
The thought occurs to me that Milwaukee opted for Pullman provided cars on its premier routes because of Pullman’s standardization of accommodations and its multiple shop locations for performing maintenance. It could also be because in the public’s mind the name “Pullman” represented a standard of excellence. Speculation, sure, but none of the decision makers are around today to give us an insight into their thinking.