“The Soo Line was never a major carrier of passenger traffic,” says Wikipedia, “since its route between Chicago and Minneapolis was much longer than the competing Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road), Chicago and North Western Railway, … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Timetable
In 1956, the Wabash had three trains a day between St. Louis and Kansas City, one of which was Union Pacific’s connection to St. Louis. It also had three trains a day in the hotly competitive Chicago-St. Louis market and … Continue reading
Here’s a timetable from just a few months before Union Pacific yanked its passenger trains away from the North Western and gave them to the Milwaukee Road instead. The schedule shows three trains a day between Chicago and Los Angeles, … Continue reading
This is both a timetable and a travel booklet urging U.S. residents to visit Mexico by rail. “Why visit Egypt?” the booklet asks, when “there are pyramids in Mexico.” Similarly, “why visit Rheims and Cologne” when “there are cathedrals a-plenty … Continue reading
Texas & Pacific was majority-owned by Missouri Pacific, but they were separately (if cooperatively) operated, so T&P’s 1955 timetable doesn’t look anything like MP’s. Click image to download a 2.5-MB PDF of this timetable contributed by Ellery Goode. In fact, … Continue reading
This timetable makes significant use of color that is absent from most railroad timetables. The four-color cover is one we have seen before and was used on MP timetables from about 1946 through 1960, which is even longer than Frisco … Continue reading
Frisco put a very pretty painting on the cover of its timetables, but they used this illustration for more than 12 years, from at least 1953 through 1965. One reason to change covers is to alert passengers that schedules have … Continue reading
Based on this timetable, a better name for Kansas City Southern might have been Shreveport Northern. Table 1 shows three trains a day between Shreveport and Kansas City. Table 2 shows two trains a day between Shreveport and New Orleans. … Continue reading
The Illinois Central and Mobile & Ohio railroads were both effectively created by an 1850 federal land grant law that aimed to build a rail line from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. In the same way that Union Pacific … Continue reading
When Eisenhower became president, his brother Milton (then president of Penn State University) sent him a 15-page memo arguing that federal policies that discriminated against the railroads — policies devised when railroads were the only effective form of transportation — … Continue reading