Oddball question

My question is going to seem off topic but it does have a railroading purpose. Sometime in the late 1950s or possibly very early 1960s my family and I took a train trip from Omaha to Chicago on the CB&Q to spend Christmas with my grandparents, with a side trip to Milwaukee via the North Shore. I am trying to pinpoint the year and the train we took. We had a morning departure from Omaha with a late afternoon arrival in Chicago. Since my grandparents never owned a car, we took the taxi from Union Station and I remember there was still daylight. Given that Chicago is on the eastern end of the Central time zone and this would have been very close to the shortest day of the year, I’m guessing we would have had to arrive before 5 pm. If anyone has access to a CB&Q timetable from the period, I’d like to know what train we might have taken.

The oddball question is in regards to pinpointing the year. I remember both my brother and I received as Christmas gifts Mattel derringers that popped out of a belt buckle. These were a new item from Mattel so if I could find out the year they came out, I would know the year of our trip. If anyone has a suggestion where I might look up this piece of trivia, I would appreciate it.

If you don’t get an answer here there are two other places where you will find a greater concentration of Q fans. Notably the Historical society and also the CB&Q yahoo group. It would be worth posting the question there.

http://www.burlingtonroute.com/
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/CBQ/

Thanks for the CB&Q info.

And I found the answer to my oddball question. After posting it, I thought why not google it and I actually found several of the Mattel Derringers being sold on ebay and one of the auctions stated these came out in 1959 which probably would have been the year I would have guessed. Now if I can find the timetable that will tell me the train we rode, I will be a happy man.