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#1 KevinKorell

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Posted 04 February 2018 - 06:15 PM

This originally appeared in the Future Fests as of Winter/Spring 2018 thread, but has been moved here.
 
For the summers, I have said in the past that there is lots to do in and around Texas, which would require a Big Three trips of sorts.  We completed one of them last year with the MTRF visiting the Dallas area.   There are two other cities with existing rail lines (and nothing new down the line in the near future).... Austin and Houston.  Houston I've put as part of a trip to New Orleans, with a round trip on the Sunset Limited between them.  More on that later.   For Austin it would be another Texas Eagle based trip, during which we could also deviate to Oklahoma City once that city's streetcar opens, and also we could make that long sought 24-hour stopover in Little Rock to ride its streetcar system.
 
Because of the thrice-weekly nature of the Sunset Limited, a Fest involving New Orleans and Houston, and as originally written to involve the City of New Orleans both ways, would require departing Chicago on a Monday, getting to New Orleans on a Tuesday afternoon, taking the Sunset Limited on Wednesday to Houston, spending 2 nights there including all day Thursday to ride the light rail system, and then taking the Sunset Limited on Friday back to New Orleans, finally leaving on the City of New Orleans on Saturday, getting back to Chicago on Sunday morning.  Doing this on the Sunset's other days of operation would require 3 nights in Houston, wasting valuable time with little more to do trainwise.  With this option, there is no full day in New Orleans to do all streetcar lines -- only selected ones the evening of the afternoon arrival of the City of New Orleans, and the morning of the afternoon departure of the same train on the second pass through the city.
 
In talking with some of our regular participants over the last Fest and otherwise communicating, there are some who would prefer not to ride the City of New Orleans, given its lack of a full service diner.  Because of this, in the past couple of weeks, I have written an alternate itinerary for New Orleans & Houston that would substitute the Crescent for the City of New Orleans.  Now because the Crescent arrives in the evening and departs very early morning, more time had to be added within New Orleans in order to have time to ride the streetcars.  (At very least, goals include the Rampart-St. Claude Line, which includes the Loyola segment that turns adjacent to Union Passenger Terminal, the Riverfront Line that was out of service on our last visit in 2011, and the Canal-Cemeteries Line, which was recently extended about one block at its extreme endpoint.)  Keeping the same restrictions in mind with the Sunset Limited,  this would mean leaving Northeastern cities on a Sunday, arriving in New Orleans on Monday evening, doing streetcar riding all day Tuesday, and then the same as above through Houston.  Arriving back in New Orleans on Friday night, we would then have a tight turn with an early Saturday morning Crescent departure, getting back to the Northeast on Sunday.
 
With the above two possibilities, one might wish to mix and match, utilizing the Crescent in one direction and the City of New Orleans in the other.   The Fest certainly could be planned to just start and end in New Orleans, with the "personal" travel to & from up to each participant, as we now usually do with trips that begin and/or end in Chicago.
 
I came up with a third option as well.  This one would involve first travel to New Orleans on the Crescent, the full day in New Orleans, the westbound Sunset Limited to Houston, 2 days and 2 nights there, and then continuing westbound on the Sunset Limited to San Antonio, and then northbound on the Texas Eagle to Austin. A 24 hour stopover there to ride the MetroRail line, and then we continue back to Chicago on the Texas Eagle, ending the Fest upon arrival.  To do this and still have the minimum possible 2 nights in Houston, this would have to take place on different days.  This option would involve departing Northeastern cities on a Wednesday, arriving New Orleans on Thursday night. Friday would be the full day in New Orleans, and then we would depart on Saturday morning for Houston, getting there that evening.  Sunday would be the full day on the light rail, or we could do it all on Monday too with a day off for personal exploration.  Depart Houston Monday evening on the Sunset Limited westbound, arriving around midnight that night in San Antonio. There is a 7-hour turnaround here (if on schedule), with an early morning departure on the northbound Texas Eagle at 7 AM Tuesday morning.   Arrive in Austin a few hours later, and spend that afternoon doing the rush hour round trip on MetroRail.  Depart Wednesday morning from Austin on the northbound Texas Eagle, and arrive in Chicago on Thursday afternoon.  Those making a same-day connection to the East would get back on Friday, 9 days after leaving.   The big downside to this is the early departure from San Antonio; the upside is avoiding the early departure of the Crescent from New Orleans.
 
Doing the latter option above would remove Austin from a future equation, thus another return to that part of the country to do Oklahoma City and Little Rock would save a couple of days since we would not have to travel south of Fort Worth.
 
Here are the current itineraries.  I denoted them by color rather than number or letter so that no option seems more preferred than the others.

Brown Itinerary:     (CHI-NOL-HOS-NOL-CHI via City of New Orleans & Sunset Limited)
Green Itinerary:     (NYP-WAS-NOL-HOS-NOL-WAS-NYP via Crescent & Sunset Limited)
Orange Itinerary:   (NYP-WAS-NOL-HOS-SAS-AUS-CHI via Crescent, Sunset Limited, & Texas Eagle)
 
--- end of LTRF discussion --

Edited by KevinKorell, 17 April 2018 - 02:41 AM.
Moved pertinent discussion to LTRF thread


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#2 pennyk

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Posted 06 February 2018 - 10:38 PM

I have a few comments regarding Summer 2018 rail fest.

 

1. of the 3 potential itineraries, I prefer Orange and Green over Brown.   I personally do not care for the City of New Orleans.  Orange seems to be more interesting.

2. I guess the Orange Houston itinerary could be spread out over 2 days.

3. the turn around time in San Antonio is either too short (to get a good night's sleep) or too long (for a short layover)



#3 KevinKorell

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Posted 06 February 2018 - 10:56 PM

Addressing #3 above:   That is the nature of the beast, as far as the way the trains are scheduled.  I looked into an intentional overrun too (like we did to Reno in 2014), such as going to El Paso or even as far as Tucson, but with the thrice-weekly Sunset Limited schedule and more required overnights it just would not work. In San Antonio, the 7 hours seems too short for a night's sleep, however if we arrive really late on #1 into SAS the wait would be shorter and might save on a hotel room (though we end up very tired), but then, we all survived the Salt Lake City ordeal in 2014!  I would not want an extra day turnaround in San Antonio because there is no rail transit to keep us busy, and it would add an unnecessary day to a long trip AND require 2 nights in hotels.



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#4 steve4031

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Posted 09 February 2018 - 12:03 AM

I like the Orange itinerary the most. This stupid class on Wednesday makes it hard to do the entire thing. But I could fly to New ORleans on Thursday to meet the group and then participate through Wednesday morning in Austin and fly how from Austin in time for the evening class. Then I could participate in the key parts of the fest.

#5 saxman

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Posted 09 February 2018 - 02:08 PM

If I had to choose I'd rather ride the Crescent rather than the CONO. I also like the idea of doing a circle rather than backtracking on the Sunset Limited and Crescent again. The ride between Houston and New Orleans is a long 9 hour ride without much scenery, and doing it twice doesn't appeal to me all that much. Despite the awful layover time in SAS, I could deal with that. I can understand others concerns of not wanting to do that layover though. I remember earlier plans of possibly using the Houston to Longview bus, but I suppose that has been nixed? I've never done it, and spending 4 hours on a bus is almost at my max for a bus ride. But all that side, since I will still be living in NOLA, I'll probably skip out on the long distance rides anyway unless I find a decent price and need a sleeping car fix.



#6 AlanB

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Posted 10 February 2018 - 01:53 PM

My preference would be for Orange, especially since I've never been on the Eagle past Fort Worth.  It would be nice to close that small hole in my riding.

 

My second choice would be for Green, although in that scenario I might well follow the end of the brown itinerary rather than getting up for 7AM to head directly back to NYC.

 

Thanks for plotting all this out Kevin!!! :)


Alan,

Take care and take trains!

#7 KevinKorell

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Posted 10 February 2018 - 07:31 PM

I am sensing that thus far, with feedback from Alan, Penny, Chris, and Steve, that the Orange circle trip would be the most popular.

 

To address what Chris said.... Understood on the backtracking between NOL and HOS.   A reason I had us going back to NOL was to have time to finish up streetcar rides as it would have been tight to do everything in one afternoon had we arrived in NOL on #59.  Coming in on #19 forces us to schedule a full day, since it gets into NOL in the evening.  We then would not have to go back on #2, which makes the circle tour via SAS and AUS a more viable and interesting option.  

 

As far as the Houston-Longview Thruway bus, if at all possible I try to avoid those; however I am certainly open to it.  I am sure I did have at one point an option of taking the Thruway bus between those two points (before I had the hunch to marry Houston with a New Orleans trip thus hitting Houston solely on the east-west axis of the Sunset Limited), and were we not also including Austin it could be yet another option.   If we did that, we would of course bypass the bad overnight transfer in SAS, as well as the 24 hour stopover in Austin. However perhaps a 24 hour stopover in Little Rock could still be done since that is along the train part of the route.  So it comes down to -- what is more popular, taking the bus ride as a shortcut (avoiding the overnight transfer and not doing Austin), or doing everything by rail and enduring the uncomfortable hours?

 

Enter a new option, the Gold Itinerary, which as above would utilize the Thruway bus and substitute the Austin stopover with Little Rock.   For the Gold Itinerary I just took the Orange Itinerary and made the changes near the end. Note that we would finish up in Chicago a day earlier thanks to the shortcut.  However, without the need to rely on the Sunset Limited to depart from Houston, we also could shift back to the schedule named in the Green Itinerary from that point, which would mean arriving HOS on a Wednesday evening, doing the light rail on Thursday, and then travelling Friday afternoon and evening on the Thruway bus and Texas Eagle to Little Rock.  Saturday would be riding the streetcars in Little Rock, and then late that night departing on the northbound Texas Eagle, arriving on Sunday.

 

Let me say also that regarding San Antonio and Austin, while the former city has many hotels (including Hilton family properties that most prefer to stay at), only a handful are within walking distance of the SAS station. Some might require taxi or hired car, noting that one has to get from and to the station within 7 hours.  In Austin, there are again a lot of hotel options, but it appears to be a hike to most of them.  Given the time of day (compared to San Antonio) in Austin, local bus service would also be available as would the hired car or taxi options.  Some hotels might have pickup service, though keep in mind that arriving in town around 9:23 AM it is possible but rather unlikely that a room for the next night would be available for check-in at that time.  For Little Rock, as discussed on an earlier Chat session, the Amtrak station is about a mile from downtown, but at least one hotel does offer shuttle service.

 

On a personal note, my intention after wrapping up the Fest wherever we do end up going, is to do a side trip to Kansas City AFTER the Fest to get the streetcar ride I missed last year.  Thus returning from NOL on the Crescent would have been out for me.  Leaving NOL on the City of New Orleans I would take the wee hours bus connection from Carbondale to St. Louis, then the Missouri River Runner.  If it turns out that we do either the Orange or new Gold options, either way we will come into St. Louis so I still get the Missouri River Runner minus the bus ride.  So a circle tour via either San Antonio/Austin or Little Rock works for me.



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#8 pennyk

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Posted 11 February 2018 - 09:32 AM

Thanks for working on another itinerary option.  Athough Gold looks interesting, I think I prefer the 7 hour layover in SAS rather than a 4 hour thruway bus ride.  However, if the group prefers Gold, I will go with the flow.



#9 shanghai

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Posted 11 February 2018 - 12:53 PM

I like either Orange or Gold.  Depending on the actual dates, I may be able to participate.

We will return from San Francisco (Granddaughter's Birthday) on July 14th, and will join the

group in WAS.  The only long distance that I have not ridden is the CONO, but maybe

another time.  I'm okay with the bus trip from Houston to Longview.



#10 steve4031

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Posted 11 February 2018 - 09:58 PM

After looking at the gold or yellow itinerary, I think I might ride west toSan Antonio, and then ride San Antonio to Chicago on 22. I would rejoin the group when you all board in Little Rock. I know this is a bit anti social, but I am having Amtrak Withdrawal symptoms. So a longer ride to look forward to this summer might mellow me out.




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