San Antonio-New Orleans-Chicago-Milwaukee
Feb. 9-12

Photos by Dave Ingles

We arrived by taxi from the airport car-rental-return lot about 9:45 Thursday evening and were told the Sunset Limited was expected in around 10:30. It actually arrived about 10:50. The Texas Eagle consist was already long since arrived and parked on the 2nd track. This view looks south, as the ex-SP Sunset Route main line is on a north-south alignment here on the east side of downtown San Antonio.

The Amtrak faciitiy is the old baggage building, kind of small but comfortable and adequate. A flat-screen TV behind me here, up on the wall, had an NBA game on to help us pass the time. This photo looks south, too.

The Eagle consist at rest; again we look south. The Eagle comes into town on the old MoPac, veers left onto the former SP, and ties up like this. In the morning, it will back up, switch to the right onto the ex-MKT, and head out, first geographically north, then west and go under the Sunset Route. This enables the train to not have to be turned in San Antonio and is why Otto was so glad to be able to ride both legs on one visit!

A sister SP 2-8-2 to the one being fixed up again in Austin on the tourist train is on display at the depot.

The old SP depot, next to the steam engine, is now the Sunset Station restaurant.

The Sunset arrives from Los Angeles, pulling in on track 1 between the station and the parked Eagle. Unfortunately, there were absolutely no announcements in the depot, so after about 10 minues when we saw coach passengers boarding, we three headed for the front of the train and boarded our sleeper. The train was due out at 11:55 p.m., and finally moved at 12:25 a.m. on Friday -- only to stop and do the switching that should've been done right away: extract the Chicago thru Eagle coach and sleeper off the rear of the Sunset, on this night ahead of two private cars bound for Houston.

I awoke at 7 a.m. as we pulled out of Houston. It was pouring rain outside, barely light enough to see anything, but from the maneuvers leaving the depot I confirmed we were going up north on HB&T trackage to access the former MoPac that UP uses in directional running over to Beaumont, Texas. This normal route for Amtrak #2 was the main reason I made this trip -- it was the last "regular service" Amtrak track segment still in use that I had not ridden. I woke up for good 10 miles or so west of Beaumont and made my first photos of the day at the depot stop. The time is about 9:30 a.m.--we are 2 and 1/2 hours late, having delayed in switching in San Antonio and, I'm told, sat west of Houston at some junction for an hour or more.

It rained all the way across Louisiana, so there weren't many photos -- this is the Conoco refinery at Lake Charles, La., about 10:45 a.m., just typical of the heavy industry along this part of the Sunset Route.

Otto spotted this moved and preserved SP depot at Crowley, La., about noon. The stations at Lake Charles and Lafayette are newer, and not really shootable, and on the south side of the track. My bedroom faced the north side.

Amtrak does use the old SP New Iberia, La., depot; we made a brief stop at 1:03 p.m., 2:23 late.

We met #1 just west of the Atchafalaya River moveable bridge (one of many on this route), engine 124 and 7 cars, at 2:21 p.m. We are stopped; he is moving; time is 1:18 p.m.

These are the old and new highway bridges across the Atachafalaya.

Saturday morning, with not enough time to ride the trolleys he'd planned, owing to an 11 a.m. hotel checkout and unwillingness to grant an extra hour, Otto joined Chuck and me in meandering around in our rental car, which we had to turn in by 12:30, workable since our Amtrak City of New Orleans would load at 1:15 p.m. and leave at 1:45. From the hotel, we headed west along the river, hoping to see something of the New Orleans Public Belt (and avoiding the central downtown with all the Mardi Gras tourists) and with the general target of trying to photograph NOPB's East Bridge Junction Tower, which is still manned. We eventually caught up with the rear of a westbound freight on the NOPB main, but didn't know whose power was on it, as the fenced-in NOPB engine facility by their fenced-in HQ office had some UP power as well as NOPB units. We dodged a wait or two for the freight to clear before we got on a main drag and let him clear. We then kept pace with him, parallel to the north, and wound up, purely by luck, at what Web master Mike Condren calls his hangout -- Central Avenue grade crossing, just west of the East Bridge Jct. Tower! Right ahead of us, the gates went down, and the power was NOPB! We're in luck. We sped to the left, down side streets and again lucked out, finding a perfect opening with no houses, fences, etc., in our way, as the 4 units accelerated up the Huey Long Bridge approach. Unfortunately, my Canon Power Shot digital was un-focusing again, visible in this first image, cropped, at our "secret street corner." My going-away image is hopelessly fuzzy (I shot a few slides), so I have included the image Chuck Weinstock generously sent me.

The power is two GP40's and two MP2000D's.

West of our vantage point, we found this eastbound train with BNSF power waiting for its turn to go thru the junction at NOPB's East Bridge Jct. Tower.

We went back to Central Ave. to await the BNSF, but he didn't move. We crossed the tracks, saw a headlight to the east, and immediately re-crossed to the sunny side, and here came a westbound for the bridge with NS power. The tower is off to the right about 2 city blocks' worth.

As the NS went by, we explored some side streets for a possible closer view of the tower, and Otto found access from a dead-end street, plus a path inside the fence for the railroad right of way, but across a big ditch from the actual tracks, obviously used as a public path. A walk east of about a city block down that path yielded this view of the tower.

As we walked back west to the car, the BNSF came along. Contrary to many photographers, I didn't mind the cables and wires obscuring these views, as they are part of the scene (plus we'd shot the BNSF "pure" before already :-).

The "Otto moment" of the trip was discovering this stretch of street running, about 8 city blocks worth, on Eagle St., off the NOPB main to a city water or sewage, or similar facility. We'd seen it westbound, but were pursuing the freight. So we had to check it out going back downtown. We're not sure it's still used, but we think so. There were tank cars visible behind the fences in the plant, we assume interchange cars. Here are three views. It's unusual when Otto doesn't know in advance of such street-running trackage, especially of this fashion, truly in the middle of the street with no ties showing, or grass in a median, etc.

Across the street with the autos visible, this side of the berm, is the NOPB main line; we're looking toward the Mississippi River.

By now it was past 11:30 and time to get back downtown. We gassed up the car and bought some snacks, providentially at a C-store outside the NOLA city limits, which meant gas was 20 cents or more cheaper than toward downtown. For a little while we drove St. Charles St. and grabbed a couple shots of the trolleys, then when traffic clogged, we returned to the thoroughfare closest to the river. We had hoped to avoid interference by the day's Mardi Gras parades, and we barely escaped being trapped or delayed, both now and between the rental-car office (near our hotel) and the station.

New Orleans suspends or shortens its trolley car routes during parades -- Mardi Gras and all the madness come first!

The Hertz person drove us in our car, after the paperwork was done, to NOUPT, and on Rampart St. we had to detour a couple of blocks owing to a new trolley line being built in its center; it will apparently go to NOUPT! We ate lunch at the Subway inside NOUPT, and around 1:05 I got in line for train #58 and made this shot, with the appropriate poster in evidence.

Chuck looks ready to relax on board the last Amtrak leg of our triangle! We all were!

This is the exact same consist we left Chicago on 6 days before, on the 6th, this day is the 11th. The consists flip back and forth on the Texas Eagle and the "City." So this is our car, sleeper "Iowa"--the cars' state names in this Superliner II series survive on the end doors, inside and out, but nowhere else on the exterior (or interior).

"Iowa" is hard to see, but it's there. The rear-end "regular" sleeper (for L.A.) on our Dallas-Austin-San Antonio ride, on which we were up front in the dorm car, was the "Louisiana." The sleeper on the Sunset was an early one, no name, just number 32011.

After we boarded #58, Chuck walked forward and took this photo of the local switcher and our train.

He also took this photo, which shows our sleeping-car attendant, Keisha, at left, and her trainee, Barbara, at right. They were both bright, cheerful, smart women who made excellent attendants -- best of the entire trip in our votes, although none we had were really "duds" as we find occasionally elsewhere!

The arena for the New Orleans Hornets, NBA team, is between the NOUPT tracks and the Louisiana Superdome. This is from our sleeper as the train pulled out, on-time.

NOUPT's Clara St. Tower has been unstaffed for a few years, as a control tower (Amtrak runs the interlocking from Chicago), but it is obviously still in some railroad use.

Speeding along the Lake Pontchartrain causeway.

And the lake was windy enough for whitecaps.

The highway bridge at Pass Manchac.

The depot at Hammond, La., our first stop, at 2:55.

The depot at McComb, Miss., where I'd forgotten IC 4-8-2 2542 is on display (to the left -- the photo is right into the sun).

Mostly we just chilled out in the SIghtseer Lounge on the pleasant sunny afternoon up thru Mississippi.

And before you knew it, it was cocktail time -- Otto's turn to buy to make on-train "rounds" all even at one apiece!

During our lengthy stop at Jackson, there was a chance to shoot the capitol dome. We waited south of town at McDowell for 32 minutes for a southbound CN (one of many we passed) to go by, but still arrived in Jackson at 5:31, allowing a 12-minute stop before we departed unofficially 1 minute early. While we were stopped, two KCS eastbound trains went by to our west, one with a pair of black-and-yellow "Retro Belle" painted units, and the other with one of those trailing a gray TFM unit, on the "Meridian Speedway" it shares with NS. The CN/IC-KCS crossing used to be all hand-throw switches, but I'm not sure if it's been modernized or not.

Waiting for our 6:30 dinner call, Chuck shows Otto his iPhone4. Otto has no cell phone yet and figures he'll jump right to an iPhone. We shall see!

The CN-IC track is smooth, and I, at least, had a restful night. Next morning, Sunday, Feb. 12, Abraham Lincoln's birthday (and still an Illinois state holiday, celebrated this year on Monday), I was awake enough at Champaign at 6:35 to photo the "new" (a few years old) depot, a transportation center cleverly named "Illinois Terminal." (The old interurban tracks passed just north of this building, and IT's city depot was a block to the west of the IC.) We were running about 30 minutes late, but Chicago arrival time has padding.

At speed, the Gilman depot at the TP&W crossing, 7:23 a.m.

Homewood Tower, long since "remoted" (not staffed) but still full of machinery. I photo'ed many an IC train here as an adult when I'd return from Michigan or college in downstate Illinois to the town I grew up in (until 1956).

The view of the unusual Southwest style stucco depot in Homewood has been obscured by a new similarly styled cover building for the stairway to the pedestrian tunnel beneath the tracks.

Local railfans got CN to display IC GP10 8408 and an IC caboose north of the depot on the west side of the tracks. On the east side of the tracks, south of the depot tunnel, is a small railfan viewing platform.

A glimpse of the Metra Electric shop south of Kensington, 115th St., in Chicago.

This is the first time I have seen, let alone tried to photograph, Metra Electric's most recent bilevel cars. This was the only northbound we saw, but it's a Sunday, service is hourly at best.

Curving onto the St. Charles Air Line about 16th St. in Chicago.

To the right and in back of us, new big condos make this dilapidated tower look really forlorn. Still staffed by Metra, it's 16th & Clark St., and governs the interlocking where the St. Charles Air Line crosses the Metra Rock Island District and also where the CN/IC Iowa Division branches off to the southwest. The permanently raised drawbridge at left is the old B&OCT bridge from Grand Central Station over the Chicago River South Branch, adjacent to one we are about to pass through (and over the Amtrak coach yard on the same elevation).

We backed into Union Station at 9:10, 10 minutes off-schedule, but with plenty of time for Otto and I to make Hiawatha #333. Chuck walked to Lou Mitchell's for breakfast, took a Blue Line L to O'Hare and flew home to Pittsburgh in early afternoon. The A&D boards give Amtrak's status this cold and windy but clear Sunday morning.

Carol met Otto and me at Milwaukee's Amtrak Airport Station, where we arrived early at 11:34 a.m., and I grabbed a faraway shot of the train going on into Milwaukee -- the same Hiawatha trainset we'd begun our trip on 6 days before. I'd logged almost 3000 miles on this odyssey, ridden three new (to me) rapid-transit/commuter routes, and filled in my Amtrak map's last "gap," Houston-Beaumont on the old MoPac -- with three big Amtrak legs "free" on Reward Points, a great start to mileage collecting for 2012.

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