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[KevinKorell]

Document our travel on the Sunset Limited from Houston to San Antonio, which will start the evening of Monday, July 16th with arrival the same night around 12 Midnight.

[KevinKorell]

Another very nice trip, this one quite speedy.

 

It started out negative, in that our train was hauling 2 private cars.  It took an alternate routing into Houston, ending up backing into the station area from the west. It first had to drop the private cars at a siding, and then backed to the platform.  So even though the train had been expected to arrive very close to schedule and depart on time at 6:55 PM, we did not board until after 7.  The detraining and boarding process was handled quickly once the train arrived, and we got out of Houston at 7:16 PM, just 21 minutes down. No worries, as the trip normally takes a lot less time than the timetable allots. There is even a refueling stop just east of San Antonio that is figured in.  The crew kept telling us we could arrive as early as 11:15 PM (vs the scheduled 12:05 AM), and at one point the Amtrak app was predicting 11:08 PM.   In reality, the arrival (also with a backup move) was at 11:23 PM, still 42 minutes early!

 

Our sleeper attendant was efficient.  He had made dinner reservations for 7:30 PM for each of us, so we did not have to bother with that worry.  He offered to put down beds for anyone who wished, and some in our group took him up on that. He did make sure that everyone was prepared for our arrival about 15 minutes before we got there.  We had another excellent dining car staff as well.  The lead service attendant was courteous and professional, as was the other server.

 

This train made the trip in less time than expected; once it finally got going it never had to stop for a freight train meet nor an engine problem as the previous version of #1 did.