Pioneer Limited (passenger train)
The Pioneer Limited was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (the "Milwaukee Road") on an overnight schedule between Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. The westbound train (to Minneapolis) was Milwaukee Road train No. 1, and the eastbound train (to Chicago) was train No. 4.
History
The Milwaukee Road began operating trains No. 1 and No. 4 in 1872, the first through trains between Chicago and the Twin Cities. The Pioneer Limited name first appeared in 1898, chosen as the result of a public contest. The 1898 train was newly-equipped with Barney & Smith sleeping cars, the carriages described in a period brochure as "...a veritable edition de luxe, bound in covers of yellow and gold." The train was re-equipped multiple times in subsequent years, the last wooden cars being replaced by steel ones in 1914.
During the train's early years, the Pioneer Limited was noted for a number of "firsts": it had the first government railway mail contract in the region, the first sleeping cars on the route, and was the region's first electrically-lighted and steam-heated train.
Streamlined, all-room sleeping cars first appeared on the Pioneer Limited in 1948. As railway passenger traffic dwindled nationwide in the 1950s, the train was combined for a time with the Milwaukee Road's Columbian passenger train, before the Columbian was finally discontinued. Passenger travel by rail continued declining through the 1960s, and passenger-train revenues were further eroded by the ending of most federal mail contracts. These circumstances ultimately resulted in the discontinuance of the Pioneer Limited; the train's final runs were on September 7, 1970.
Other overnight Chicago–Twin Cities trains
Through much of its life, the Pioneer Limited was one of three premiere passenger trains that competed for overnight business on the Chicago-Twin Cities run — the others were the Black Hawk, operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and the North Western Limited, operated by the Chicago and North Western Railway. The North Western Limited was discontinued on June 14, 1959 and the last runs of the Black Hawk were on April 12, 1970. The Pioneer Limited was thus the last privately-operated overnight passenger train on the route.
For a time in the 1970s and early 1980s, Amtrak operated overnight rail passenger service along the route of the Pioneer Limited, as part of longer-distance routes from Chicago to either Seattle or Duluth. The last such trains departed on October 25, 1981. Daytime passenger service on the Pioneer Limited route survives.
References
- Dubin, Arthur D. Some Classic Trains. Milwaukee: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1964. ISBN 978-0-89024-011-3.
