Houston–San Antonio
April 21, 2015

by David Ingles

Tuesday, the final lap to the San Antonio (SAS) meeting, our AAPRCO special was to take the Sunset Route from Houston to Rosenberg, then go north on the old Santa Fe – route of the Texas Chief, even under Amtrak – to Sealy, then west on UP’s old Katy main line to Smithville, where it forks to go south to SAS or north to Austin, Waco, and the DFW Metroplex area. In November 1994 I was on a 224-mile round-trip UP E9-powered excursion from Eureka Yard (the old Katy facility, a bit NW of today’s ex-SP Houston Amtrak station, where our AAPRCO train overnighted) out to Smithville and back, after wyeing the train. Amtrak has detoured the Texas Eagle between the Austin and New Braunfels areas via Smithville on the old Katy, but I’d not done that, so this day, Smithville to wherever we rejoined the ex-MoPac, i.e., the Texas Eagle normal route, would be new. There are several opportunities (crossovers) to exchange ex-Katy and ex-MoPac trackage on what is essentially a two-main-track route for UP. The old Katy line into the city, and Eureka Yard, are gone, in the name of widening the parallel Katy Freeway, east of the large suburb of Katy.

Since we’d parked at the Amtrak station, I made the effort to get up early and slowly walk forward for a photo of our head end, even tho the sun was just up and the angle would not be the best. The humidity of the Gulf hit me as I stepped to the platform – our nice dry week was history, alas. I made my photos at 7:20 a.m, and we pulled at 7:58, clearing the depot at 8:02. The depot, beneath freeway bridges tucked away at the northwest corner of downtown Houston, our fifth largest city if memory serves, is probably, with only one triweekly train in each direction, known by less than 1 percent of the population. Such is America by train. In the photo, the depot is the small 1-story building in the foreground; the brick multi-story building is across the street. The portion at the right is the waiting room leading to the tracks. I shot thru a roomette window across the hall as we pulled out.

As we pulled from the depot, I made this photo thru a roomette window, above a street underpass, of the downtown Houston skyline; we look more or less south-southeast, I think.

Out west of the city, UP is lengthening several siding on the Sunset Route; I made this photo from the breakfast table in the Caritas, somewhere out around Missouri City, I think, about 8:30.

Out at Rosenberg, about 30 miles west of downtown Houston, we passed Tower 17, which guarded the crossing of SP’s Sunset Route and Santa Fe’s main line from Temple and points north to Galveston, now moved a city block or two and displayed in a trackside park. It was one of the last handful of staffed interlocking towers in the state (Tower 16 in Sherman being another I can think of offhand). That’s the old Santa Fe, BNSF’s Galveston Sub, paralleling us north of the Tower park display. Soon, we got the the diamond and segued northwest on the Galveston Sub, for 32 “old” miles up to Sealy. I’m still at the breakfast table.

There wasn’t anything really to photograph until we got to La Grange, 46 miles west of Sealy, where I shot our train on a curve entering town, and then the depot as we passed it, at 11:18. On the E9 trip, La Grange was a lunch stop. The special stopped at the depot, which is along some good mid-street running, unloaded us and either backed up or pulled ahead to clear the street-running, while we all trooped south and west a few blocks, passing the courthouse in the city’s square, to eat at an Elks Club or similar large dining hall, probably a BBQ buffet, if I recall correctly. We then walked back and re-boarded; this was on the westbound leg of the excursion. Today there are a couple of Katy cabooses displayed on the depot’s east side (I took a slide there); I love the Katy’s standard of city AND state on their station signs!

Smithville’s depot was gone already in 1994, so I took no pictures as we rolled through the wye at 12:12 after an 18-minute stop for, I’d guess, an exchange of crew or pilots. We changed from ex-Katy to ex-MoPac at UP Junction, just south of San Marcos, at 1:55, which meant I’d logged 52 new Katy miles. The Texas Eagle, by the way, must use ex-MoPac thru San Marcos, home of the large Texas State University, for the Amtrak platform and shelter is on that track, not the ex-Katy. We crossed the ex-Katy in New Braunfels (no connection at the diamond) at 2:14 and cruised on to San Antonio, passing the subject of my next photo,  the old IGN (MoPac) depot in downtown San Antonio, at 2:54. This day, it was surrounded by tents etc., as a weeklong Fiesta was occurring in the city. On my first SAS visit, in the early 1970s on the new Inter-American to Laredo, this was the Amtrak stop on the MoPac route (code SAM, I think), and the depot was derelict. I don’t know when it was refurbished, but it’s been a while, and I don’t know its interior usage today.

We crept down the ex-SP (I think) connecting track, 1.6 miles long, from the MoPac to the Sunset Route, beginning at 2:54, passed Tower 112, where the old Katy main line diverges from the Sunset Route, at 3:08, and pulled to a stop at the Amtrak depot (next to the old SP depot, called Sunset-something, lately a restaurant but presently closed) at 3:15. I hobbled forward for a cuple of token photos, and then Phil Moser and I walked a block to our hotel (for two nights), the Staybridge Suites, checked in, relaxed, showered, and then taxied, with Chuck Weinstock, John Harmon, and Mike Rose) to a great Mexican restaurant in the heart of downtown.

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