Also I have analyzed the Houston-via-New-Orleans method.
To do the City of New Orleans to Sunset Limited, we would need to leave Chicago on Saturday, Monday, or Thursday. We'd arrive in New Orleans Sunday, Tuesday, or Friday afternoons, stay overnight, and then leave on the Sunset on its operating days of Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday in the morning 9 AM, getting to Houston the same evening. Doing it this way would allow some time for riding streetcars in New Orleans. Approaching New Orleans via the Crescent would get us into NOL in the evening if on time, not really allowing much time for anything before we would be leaving town 13-1/2 hours later.
In the other direction, one would leave Houston around lunchtime on Tuesday, Friday, or Sunday, getting into New Orleans the same evening at 9:40 PM. Again this would not allow much time for any transit activities that night. The next day, if we were to take the Crescent, it leaves 7 AM, again quite early. But if we took the City of New Orleans northward, we would have the entire morning and lunchtime in town to do streetcars as the City leaves 1:45 PM. We would do that on a Wednesday, Saturday, or Monday afternoon, and get to Chicago the following morning (Thursday, Sunday, or Tuesday).
Now if we did the same routing in both directions (to avoid the Longview bus ride and/or the long overnight San Antonio dwell), I would expect that we would want to have one full day in Houston, thus two hotel nights. The only way that works is with the Wednesday arrival of #1 and the Friday departure of #2. With the Monday and Saturday arrivals into Houston of #1, there is only one overnight before we would have to return eastbound on #2. With the expanding light rail network, that would only give us Tuesday or Sunday morning to do the whole system.
Ideally, therefore, this would mean leaving CHI on a Monday on #59, getting into NOL Tuesday afternoon, using the evening to do streetcar rides. Leave NOL and arrive HOS in Wednesday. Use Thursday as the full day in Houston. Depart HOS on #2 on Friday early afternoon, arriving NOL that evening. Saturday would be another chance to ride streetcars in NOL, and then we would board #58 that afternoon, getting into Chicago on a Sunday morning. Believe it or not, that takes up 7 days out of Chicago. It would mean 2 consecutive overnights in Houston, and 2 separate hotel nights in New Orleans.
So in any case, I think Dick is on the right track as far as using the City of New Orleans as opposed to the Crescent for reasons outlined above. Again speaking with reality in mind here, whatever trip does develop from this,
I think it would be worthwhile to wait a couple of years until Houston's Green Line is finished beyond the incomplete bridge segment, and also New Orleans' streetcar expansion around the edge of the French Quarter is open.
We meanwhile would have a better chance of visiting Dallas first since things will be pretty much ready to go once the DART Orange Line opens to the airport (later this month), the McKinney Avenue Streetcar downtown extension is done, and the Union Station-Oak Cliff Streetcar is finished as well.
Edited by KevinKorell, 04 August 2014 - 02:13 PM.