Black Hawk (CB&Q train)
named passenger train of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad
The Black Hawk was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad between Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, the nighttime counterpart to the Burlington's Twin Zephyrs.
At the time, the CB&Q sought to compete in the Chicago-Twin Cities overnight train market against the Milwaukee Road's Pioneer Limited and the C&NW's North Western Limited. In common with its competitors, the Black Hawk carried both sleeping cars and coaches. However, with departure well past dinnertime, the train's dining car (or diner-lounge) served only "evening refreshments" upon departure and a full breakfast the following morning. In later years, the breakfast became Continental in nature.
During its final years, the Black Hawk provided an eastbound connection with the Northern Pacific Railway's Mainstreeter, and the Great Northern Railway's Western Star. By the late 1960s it combined with the Western Star both ways, and with the Mainstreeter westbound.
The Black Hawk was discontinued after its final run on the night of April 12–13, 1970, six weeks after March 2, when the CB&Q merged into Burlington Northern.
The public source identifies “Black Hawk (CB&Q train)” as named passenger train of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Black, Hawk and train.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4920875. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black Hawk (CB&Q train)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.