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With the Toronto and Denver events behind us, it's now time to turn to what would be next.
Given what happened earlier this year with our first ever weather-related Fest postponement, the general consensus seems to be to plan to hold the "winter" event in March rather than January. There are positives and negative to this. January events almost every year took place over the MLK holiday weekend, allowing for an extra day of travel, while in March there are no such weekends. Those of us in the work force would need to take a day or two off for March. Also should Spring holidays fall in March, it would be better to avoid them as they are higher travel times that would fill trains and inflate hotel prices. In 2020, such holidays fall in April, so much of March is safe. The positive is obviously a better expectation for good (and warmer) weather in March vs January. Exact weekend has not yet been chosen.
That said, we should be a go for a Boston RailFest at that time. As indicated earlier, we would do a full Boston-Brunswick round trip on Saturday (which would fill the entire day), and on Sunday two MBTA commuter rail lines.
Next, 2019 saw an experiment in holding Fests in both July and September. Was the experiment a success? Numbers of participants were down from previous years, which can be viewed as both a positive and a negative. Those who went on both trips to Toronto and Denver respectively had a great time riding the rails notwithstanding. What I strive to do is to avoid going to hotter climates in the middle of the summer as we have in the past in July. This leant itself to going north and paying a visit to Canada, as we did this past July, and Denver which we expected to be cooler in September than it would have been in July. Denver ended up being in the low 80's the days we were there, which was comfortable (a lot better than 100 would have been).
Building on that, and because I originally had a combined Toronto-Montreal Fest before I broke it up to just Toronto, we could do a similar event in Montreal in July 2020. As of right now, it is planned as a 4-day event, including travel to & from on the Adirondack, and 2 full days riding the rails within the Montreal area. I expect however that we will add some stopovers in New York State in both directions as we did for Toronto, due to the poor calling times in New York City, which would expand this to 6 days.
As I have stated in previous updates like this one, there is so much "new" to do in Texas, and neighboring Oklahoma and Arkansas. A single Fest trip can take in the new streetcars in El Paso and Oklahoma City, TEXRail in Fort Worth, and the existing streetcar in Little Rock. That's 4 cities. Based on a trip starting and ending in Chicago, it would be a 10-day journey. So far the working name being Texas-Oklahoma-Arkansas RailFest (TOARF), I'd like to shoot for next September on this.
If there is worry about El Paso and its weather down near the Mexican border, I looked at a weather history showing THIS past week in September, to see what temperatures might be like. I see short highs around 90-91 around 12 noon, but quickly climbing there through the morning and falling off in the afternoon with night lows in the high 60's and low 70's. Again, it's better than 100.
Having now been on my own to Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Detroit within the past few years, all 3 cities have viable Amtrak schedules and streetcars or trolleys awaiting us to ride. A Midwest RailFest becomes possible, with Chicago as a base and transfer point, to visit all three cities. The whole thing could be done in just 4 days, starting and ending at Chicago (but requiring more days of personal travel to make connections to or from elsewhere). When this might be is open for discussion but what is above does effectively book us up for 2020.
The next thing I've heard is when might we return to the West Coast? Seattle, while we just missed the short extension between SeaTac and Angle Lake, has its light rail being extended further in three directions so there will be more reasons to visit in a few years. Ditto for Portland, whose MAX light rail line and Portland Streetcar are slated for extensions down the road. Regarding California, in the Los Angeles area the only thing new in the near future is the Crenshaw Line LRT (which by that time will have a letter name likely C). We still haven't ridden the Angels' Flight funicular downtown either. Moving to the Bay Area, a lot awaits us. Several extensions of the BART system include the spur to Oakland Airport, e-BART to Antioch, and the southward extension of the conventional BART system beyond Fremont to Berryessa which is still tentatively planned to be open to the public by the end of this year. And then there is SMART, which was built as an "orphan" line requiring a bus to get to it, but which will soon (by the end of 2019) be extended to Larkspur Landing (which will require a ferry to get to it). Once all these timetables shake out, I can plan a Bay Area RailFest for a couple of years from now.
What about Arizona? This becomes tricky on the account of just the thrice-weekly Amtrak Sunset Limited... and the need to use a Thruway van or bus connection between Maricopa and either downtown Tempe or the PHX International Airport. From either Tempe or the airport we can then get elsewhere in the Phoenix area. Phoenix has the ever growing light rail system, while Tucson itself has a modern streetcar plying its right-of-way. To combine the two would require riding approximately 2 hours on a Greyhound bus between Phoenix and Tucson. The trip seems to be best done by taking the eastbound Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Maricopa and then 3 days later the next eastbound Sunset Limited from Tucson to either New Orleans or Chicago.
Of course new ideas can pop up all the time as new rail lines come online.
