Eagle Fest Completed Options

[Mike Hammond]

This is Lynn, Mike's wife. We arrived in Cleveland about 3:55 a.m. on Thursday, July 23rd. What a wonderful time everybody had and your group is just the bomb. I'm sure Kevin will have a ton more to say. He should be in NYP around rush hour today, Thursday, and I know that he has a priority of checking in as soon as he gets back and probably before he is unpack. Many thanks for including me and welcoming me with open arms. It was a "bomb"!!!! Oops, I just heard about London this morning - maybe that's the wrong word to use, but the participants will recall the chocolate bomb as a dessert. And no, I haven't been to the scrapbooking store yet. That's on the agenda for tomorrow or Saturday. We're off to the waterpark to soak up the rays and relax on the Lazy Man's River. Again, thanks so very much.

Lynn Hammond

[KevinKorell]

Thanks Lynn for posting the first post-Fest note.

Michael and I are back home, after a rough drive in the tail end of the rush hour.

I want to say thank you to everyone who attended OTOL Eagle RailFest 2005, whether you simply rode around the Chicago Loop with us for 5 minutes, or rode the rails wire to wire from New York to New York. While there were a few glitches in the plan as always, things went pretty much as we hoped for. As a group we got along very well, growing on one another as the week progressed. We learned things about one another that we probably did not know before.

And now it's back into trip report mode to capture everything we did for the benefit of those who were unfortunate enough not to be able to make it. The report will come as soon as it is humanly possible to complete it. And it will contain photos from several participants.

Now we look forward to Washington next month, and of course many more gatherings in the winter and next summer! Our fun never ends!

[KevinKorell]

Those of you who rode Amtrak trains on the Fest who have not already done so, please post your Amtrak mileage in the topic for the July Amtrak Mileage Tally.

[KevinKorell]

A few minor changes and additions on the Eagle RailFest 2005 website:

• The homepage has been changed to past tense to reflect completion of the event.
• Participant List is now the Actual Participant List as all 15 people who were part of our fun are listed along with their hometowns. This includes those who spent even a few minutes riding around the Chicago Loop with us on Friday, and those who were involved wire to wire for 8 days.
• The former Tentative Itinerary is now the Itinerary. The only change made to it was the removal of Amtrak calling times in Boston since they were irrelevant as nobody from New England participated.
• A new Actual Itinerary was created. This reflects the real times our various trains departed and arrived, and it also shows what activities we did and the few that were omitted due to time constraints. It also shows an impromptu after-dinner ride on the M-Line that we took on Sunday evening. From this Actual Itinerary, the report on our activities will eventually be created.

[jis]

Thought this might be of interest to the rail history buffs who were on the Eagle Fest:

I had a chance to check the pre-UP ownership of the tracks that we travelled on South of St. Louis. It turns out that St. Louis to Dallas was MoPac (Missouri Pacific) all the way. Going further back Texarkana - Dallas was TP (Texas and Pacific). St. Louis to Texarkana was SIMS (St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern).

And of course the TRE tracks between Ft. Worth and Dallas was CRIG (Chicago Rock Island and Gulf) which was a subsidiary of CRIP (Chicago Rock Island and Pacific).

Beyond Mockingbird, the Plano DART route used to be HTC (Houston and Texas Central Railroad) and the Garland DART route used to be MKTT (Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad of Texas). The Westmoreland DART route used to be GCSF (Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad) later ATSF, south of Corinth. The abandoned bridge that we saw across the Trinity River next to the DART line used to carry GCSF.

The freight tracks that we saw by Forest/Jupiter on the way to Garland is DGNO (Dallas Garland and Northeastern), a subsidiary of RailAmerica. It used to be MKTT.

Jishnu.

This post has been edited by jis: Jul 25 2005, 09:24 PM

[KevinKorell]

Jishnu,

That is very interesting. Thanks!

[Mike Hammond]

This is Lynn, Mike's wife again. I just sent out an invite to view Day 2 pictures of Chicago - 17 in all. This time I numbered the pictures in the order they were taken since WebShots does not upload them in the order I sent them. I hope this helps. Let me know of anybody else interested in viewing these and I'll be glad to send them an invite. The rest will be uploaded as time permits - but not tonight. I better scram and get ready for the real world again. LOL

Lynn

[AmtrakFan]

Lynn or Mike,
Can I have a link to the Photos Please?