Starting in 1957, GN replaced the orange-and-green timetable covers it used in the early 1950s with this blue-and-red cover featuring Great Domes on the Incomparable Empire Builder. Inside, there are some font changes and slight changes in schedules, but the … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Timetable
America’s railroads carried more passengers in 1944 than any other year in history: four-and-a-half times as many passenger miles as in 1937, eight times as many as 1932, and more than twice as many as in 1920, the previous peak. … Continue reading
This simple card lists 1938 fares from Portland to Chicago on the Empire Builder. The one-way coach fare was $39.50–more than $500 today. A lower berth in tourist class was $56.96, or about $750 today, while a lower berth in … Continue reading
When the Empire Builder replaced the Oriental Limited as Great Northern’s premiere train in 1929, the latter name replaced the Glacier Park Limited for the secondary train. But with the Depression, business dropped off so much that GN was forced … Continue reading
One of the last timetables before Great Northern inaugurated the Empire Builder, this is one of the curious timetables (of which we’ll see more) in which the cover page, shown below, is actually the last page, while the first page … Continue reading
The cover says “local time tables,” but this is more like what in later years would be called a “condensed timetable.” While the complete Great Northern timetables of the era had a colorful cover (shown below) and were 48 pages … Continue reading
Burlington’s last timetable before the Burlington Northern merger in March, 1970, showed a sad remnant of the railroad’s past passenger train glory. What had been a 24-page timetable barely three years before was now down to the equivalent of just … Continue reading
The Burlington timetable that had been 36 pages in 1948 was down to 24 pages in 1966. The major trains and routes were still there, but some secondary trains and most branch line trains were gone. Click image to download … Continue reading
The C&S timetable was reduced from 12 pages in the 1946 edition to eight pages in 1963. Yet the railroad still offered two trains a day between Denver and Dallas, trains 1 & 2, the Texas Zephyr, and trains 7 … Continue reading
This timetable provides a snapshot of the Burlington during the post-war transition period. The Empire Builder had been streamlined, and the Twin Zephyrs had some of the nation’s first dome cars. But the California Zephyr had yet to be introduced … Continue reading