At our Fests it's been practice to discuss among our core group what we should do next. It's hard to get everyone together at the same time, as people tend to spread out on trains, and to wander away at endpoint stations. But those of you who were talkative during our 8 days together, the subject did come up as I roamed the long distance trains, so there were mini-conversations about it.
Nothing thus far is etched in stone. I am sure if it was, some of you would already have hotel reservations made in the host cities.
I think it's clear we will be doing our Winter 2015 event in the Washington, DC area, now that the Silver Line first phase is open and the DC Streetcar first phase is now supposed to be open by November 2014. Even if the streetcar date slips yet again beyond January, we probably should just commit to the area anyhow. I'll take requests on other Washington Metro routes to ride, and to make a second day out of it, perhaps we go up to Baltimore and do either light rail, Baltimore Metro, or a combination of those. One direction to Baltimore could be on the new weekend MARC service, and the other could be an Amtrak points run, something we all need in January.
The picture is much less clear for next summer.......
So what is done and ready for our visit now? What comes to mind is Minneapolis/St. Paul, which with the Amtrak station move to St. Paul and the recent opening of the Green Line won't have anything else major happening for a number of years. Visiting there would require one full day and two hotel nights, made possible by the late night arrival of the westbound Empire Builder, and the morning departure of the eastbound Empire Builder. As I've mentioned before, because the Amtrak station is in St. Paul, I would recommend staying there both nights, and using the Green Line both ways on our full activity day. Besides the Green Line there is also the Blue Line, and Northstar commuter rail. The latter must be done in the early fringe of the evening rush hour in order to accomplish a possible round trip out and back. Some have also requested off time at Mall of America to explore. This was always an intended lunch stop, so it probably can be set to last a couple of hours.
Minneapolis/St. Paul therefore would take up three days, including the full day there, plus the travel between Chicago and St. Paul in each direction on the Empire Builder. What else, therefore, can we do to make the trip significant?
There is plenty that we still have not accomplished in the Chicago area as a group since we had our first visit in the modern era of Fests back in 2003. Two or three more days of activities could easily be done to fill the time -- including a rehash of something unique as the South Shore Line to South Bend Airport and back.
In lieu of that, we turn our eyes south. I have two Fests written for Texas and stops along the route such as Oklahoma City (via the Heartland Flyer) and a 24-hour stopover in Little Rock to do that city's streetcars. Again, what in Texas is ready to ride and what isn't? A few of you requested Dallas once more, and yes with the last segment of light rail set to open later this summer, and an extension of the McKinney Avenue streetcar downtown to open soon, this does rate a return. I had paired it with Houston, which also has a growing light rail network. Houston's light rail network won't be totally completed anytime soon, but the starter Red Line has already been extended northward, and two new lines should be open by the end of this calendar year.
The downside of Houston is its inaccessibility by Amtrak from the north. It is on the Sunset Limited route, which runs east-west and only thrice weekly. A daily Thruway bus connects it to the Texas Eagle at Longview, but that route misses the Dallas/Fort Worth area. So one question whose answer we must agree upon is how to best visit Houston? In pairing it with Dallas, I had us going one direction from Chicago to Houston via Longview, with the last segment by bus. To get from Houston to Dallas would mean taking the westbound Sunset Limited to San Antonio, and the northbound Texas Eagle from there to Dallas. That would require a rather long overnight stopover in San Antonio. After what we experienced in Salt Lake City, how popular would that be? Another alternative could be to approach or leave Houston in the other direction to/from New Orleans -- at least that would be an overnight hotel stay in New Orleans. But that would leave Dallas out.
Texas also has the Metrorail line run by Cap Metro in Austin, something most possible in the early afternoon rush hour. It therefore would lend itself to a 24-hour stopover.
So I am open to ideas here --- how we can best utilize our time and do as much rail riding as possible in what we have found to be a comfortable amount of time -- approximately one week out of Chicago, which translates to 2-4 days longer depending on where people live on the east coast. I am starting to think that THREE trips to Texas may be necessary over the course of the next few years in order to avoid that overnight San Antonio dwell.