This originally appeared in the Future Fests as of Winter/Spring 2018 thread, but has been moved here.
For the summers, I have said in the past that there is lots to do in and around Texas, which would require a Big Three trips of sorts. We completed one of them last year with the MTRF visiting the Dallas area. There are two other cities with existing rail lines (and nothing new down the line in the near future).... Austin and Houston. Houston I've put as part of a trip to New Orleans, with a round trip on the Sunset Limited between them. More on that later. For Austin it would be another Texas Eagle based trip, during which we could also deviate to Oklahoma City once that city's streetcar opens, and also we could make that long sought 24-hour stopover in Little Rock to ride its streetcar system.
Because of the thrice-weekly nature of the Sunset Limited, a Fest involving New Orleans and Houston, and as originally written to involve the City of New Orleans both ways, would require departing Chicago on a Monday, getting to New Orleans on a Tuesday afternoon, taking the Sunset Limited on Wednesday to Houston, spending 2 nights there including all day Thursday to ride the light rail system, and then taking the Sunset Limited on Friday back to New Orleans, finally leaving on the City of New Orleans on Saturday, getting back to Chicago on Sunday morning. Doing this on the Sunset's other days of operation would require 3 nights in Houston, wasting valuable time with little more to do trainwise. With this option, there is no full day in New Orleans to do all streetcar lines -- only selected ones the evening of the afternoon arrival of the City of New Orleans, and the morning of the afternoon departure of the same train on the second pass through the city.
In talking with some of our regular participants over the last Fest and otherwise communicating, there are some who would prefer not to ride the City of New Orleans, given its lack of a full service diner. Because of this, in the past couple of weeks, I have written an alternate itinerary for New Orleans & Houston that would substitute the Crescent for the City of New Orleans. Now because the Crescent arrives in the evening and departs very early morning, more time had to be added within New Orleans in order to have time to ride the streetcars. (At very least, goals include the Rampart-St. Claude Line, which includes the Loyola segment that turns adjacent to Union Passenger Terminal, the Riverfront Line that was out of service on our last visit in 2011, and the Canal-Cemeteries Line, which was recently extended about one block at its extreme endpoint.) Keeping the same restrictions in mind with the Sunset Limited, this would mean leaving Northeastern cities on a Sunday, arriving in New Orleans on Monday evening, doing streetcar riding all day Tuesday, and then the same as above through Houston. Arriving back in New Orleans on Friday night, we would then have a tight turn with an early Saturday morning Crescent departure, getting back to the Northeast on Sunday.
With the above two possibilities, one might wish to mix and match, utilizing the Crescent in one direction and the City of New Orleans in the other. The Fest certainly could be planned to just start and end in New Orleans, with the "personal" travel to & from up to each participant, as we now usually do with trips that begin and/or end in Chicago.
I came up with a third option as well. This one would involve first travel to New Orleans on the Crescent, the full day in New Orleans, the westbound Sunset Limited to Houston, 2 days and 2 nights there, and then continuing westbound on the Sunset Limited to San Antonio, and then northbound on the Texas Eagle to Austin. A 24 hour stopover there to ride the MetroRail line, and then we continue back to Chicago on the Texas Eagle, ending the Fest upon arrival. To do this and still have the minimum possible 2 nights in Houston, this would have to take place on different days. This option would involve departing Northeastern cities on a Wednesday, arriving New Orleans on Thursday night. Friday would be the full day in New Orleans, and then we would depart on Saturday morning for Houston, getting there that evening. Sunday would be the full day on the light rail, or we could do it all on Monday too with a day off for personal exploration. Depart Houston Monday evening on the Sunset Limited westbound, arriving around midnight that night in San Antonio. There is a 7-hour turnaround here (if on schedule), with an early morning departure on the northbound Texas Eagle at 7 AM Tuesday morning. Arrive in Austin a few hours later, and spend that afternoon doing the rush hour round trip on MetroRail. Depart Wednesday morning from Austin on the northbound Texas Eagle, and arrive in Chicago on Thursday afternoon. Those making a same-day connection to the East would get back on Friday, 9 days after leaving. The big downside to this is the early departure from San Antonio; the upside is avoiding the early departure of the Crescent from New Orleans.
Doing the latter option above would remove Austin from a future equation, thus another return to that part of the country to do Oklahoma City and Little Rock would save a couple of days since we would not have to travel south of Fort Worth.
Here are the current itineraries. I denoted them by color rather than number or letter so that no option seems more preferred than the others.
Brown Itinerary: (CHI-NOL-HOS-NOL-CHI via City of New Orleans & Sunset Limited)
Green Itinerary: (NYP-WAS-NOL-HOS-NOL-WAS-NYP via Crescent & Sunset Limited)
Orange Itinerary: (NYP-WAS-NOL-HOS-SAS-AUS-CHI via Crescent, Sunset Limited, & Texas Eagle)
--- end of LTRF discussion --
Edited by KevinKorell, 17 April 2018 - 02:41 AM.
Moved pertinent discussion to LTRF thread