Day 2, Monday, May 30, 2016
(celebrated Memorial Day)
Poplar Bluff, Mo.–Fort Worth, Texas

Photos by Dave Ingles

I was awake as we crossed the Thebes Bridge, with a northbound stack train passing to our right, back into Missouri at 1:25 a.m, but I did not awaken during our stay at North Dexter, I think to change pilots, from 2:39 to 2:53, and so i slept thru the 24 new miles for me on the detour. I did watch the stop at Poplar Bluff, from 3:55 to 4:12, which means we left 4 hours 30 minutes late. John Arbuckle sent this first photo around, of the prior evening's #21, having swiped it off the Internet, taken by apparently a local fan, who I'm told also shot our train stopped there. The train is on the "detour" from Dexter, aka MoPac's main route into central Arkansas, and Amtrak used the grade crossing on the curve for any Poplar Bluff passengers. I'm told our #21 had one to board and one to disembark.

I awakened enough to take a photo first at the depot in Malvern, Ark., but most depot photos I shot on this odyssey will be found in a separate file called "Explorers Depot Album." Malvern is Milepost 388.7, so the vestibule view shows us leaving town on what was a cloudy and damp morning. The time is 8:41 a.m., meaning we left Malvern 4:43 late.

With the "Eagle" so late, I had my first chance (with Dutch doors) to photograph in Hope, Ark., President Bill Clinton's hometown. The first shot shows I think the old freight house, then the passenger station (municipally owned now, and used by Amtrak). That depot photo is in the other depot file. I took only a slide as we passed Clinton's boyhood home.

Trackside ground in northeast Texas, south of Atlanta (where I shot a depot slide), showed evidence of a lot of recent rain, and typically was a "tree tunnel," but riding the rear platform on the well-maintained, up-and-down track was nevertheless fun. You don't get these opportunities often! From Texarkana to Marshall, and then to the west, was actually MoPac ally Texas & Pacific's trackage.The track inspector in the hi-rail is at Kildare, Texas.

In Caritas's 10-seat rear lounge, Clark Johnson huddles with IPH's Manager of Car Operations Jim Fetchero — along with Clark's wife, Nona Hill, them being the "brains of the operation" for these trips.

Marshall, whose depot is in a wye, is an important T&P-MP-UP junction, with the line to Shreveport and New Orleans coming in from the east to join our route, which turns west here. It's also an Amtrak crew-change point, and I concentrated on slides since this was my first true photo opportunity there and it's an attractive preserved depot with a T&P diamond herald on it. My next digital image was of one of several T&P cabooses preserved trackside, this one at Mineola, our next stop. We left there (station photo in depot file) at 2:36 pm, a full 5 hours 11 minutes late.

I was in the Great Dome when we passed #22, the northbound "Eagle," at Miller Siding, MP 208 not far east of Dallas, at 4:04 p.m. It had engine 67. You may compare the Great Dome with #22's Sightseer Lounge for height and window placement. I took few pictures on the Marshall–Dallas segment, it being ruler straight for the most part and kind of boring. We met several UP freights but with no delays.

Entering Dallas I took more photos, including of the new streetcar line (a single, short one -- in the 3rd photo) and light rail activity at Union Station. We arrived at 4:22 and left 20 minutes later, 8 minutes short of being 5 hours late. The second shot shows some of our Explorers approaching us on the platform. They had planned to board at Fort Worth but because of our lateness, were able to get from DFW or Love Field to Dallas in plenty of time, some by light rail and some by Uber or taxi. The Trinity Rail Express commuter operation between Dallas and Fort Worth was not running on Memorial Day, so their options for joining us were a bit limited.

DART light-rails, however, were offering full service. This train is leaving Union Station, the head building visible behind it.

The "Eagle" has forsaken the sometimes-clogged UP (ex-MP) main to Fort Worth thru Arlington for the TRE route, to the north, mostly ex-Rock Island trackage, and here we bend right at "JFK Junction," with the light rail tracks next to us. Just to the right is the Texas Book Depository with its "6th Floor Museum," which our family visited in 1998, and the "grassy slope" down to the underpass under the tracks, a car-length or two behind us. A bit farther west, a light-rail train passed us.

Soon after we crossed the Trinity River (again) and entered Fort Worth's Intermodal Station (mostly city buses), at 5:36, 4 hours 11 minutes late thanks to schedule padding, Amtrak's "Heartland Flyer" for Oklahoma City, which had waited for connecting passengers off our #21, pulled out, NPCU 90222 up front and P42 No. 44 "pushing." The prior river bridge shot is by Mike Palmieri's son Chris; the family is native to New Orleans, but the parents relocated after losing their property in Katrina, and son Chris works in Fort Worth. Father Mike is a Kalmbach contributing photographer. Passenger Phil Gosney sent me Chris's image, showing #21's 3 units.

Not long after #21, having uncoupled our two engines to get out of the way, left for San Antonio, our engines recoupled and a relief Amtrak crew pushed us back a half mile to the "Apex Wye" to turn the train around so we could pull out directly in the morning for Amarillo. I rode the Caritas rear platform, and my first shot was of the building that TRE track construction "bored a hole through" to enter the Fort Worth depot. As we emerged, a southbound BNSF freight went by overhead.

I photographed on the wye as we backed toward Dallas first, then went north, but the trackside shots are from passenger Phil Gosney, who was "chasing" the move with Chris Palmieri, who shot us entering Fort Worth on the Trinity River bridge. The entire wye move consumed only 20 minutes. The Purina mill's Trackmobile-like tie vehicle seemed unique with its red-and-white squares emblem. Gosney is an Amtrak engineer in California.

We pushed down past the Amtrak station and by the old Santa Fe station, used in early Amtrak years, to park for the night on the southeast end of the platform, in the direction of Tower 55. BNSF freights would pass us to the north, and I shot one before sunset to end the day's photography.

This page was designed and is maintained by Mike Condren. If you have materials
that you would like to contribute, contact me at mcondren@cbu.edu