Extended Texas Eagle?

[wcc]

Someone told me that the Texas Eagle route was once longer, and ran from Chicago to Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border, instead of ending in San Antonio as it currently does. I haven't seen anything about this on any Amtrak websites, does anyone remember this? Why was the route shortened?

 

[Guest_steve_relei]

That was the Inter-American that ran all the way to Laredo. However, that service was discontinued in 1979 and replaced with the present Eagle, which now goes only to San Antonio.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

I know your question presupposes an Amtrak context, but you may find the pre-Amtrak to be rather interesting as well. The original pre-Amtrak Texas Eagle was a complicated operation.

One of the highlights of the operation was a through sleeper than ran from St. Louis, to, get this, Mexico City. Yep that is right! It was transferred from the Texas Eagle to the Aztec Eagle(National Railways of Mexico) at New Laredo.

In the top years(late 40's to mid 60's) there were two trains:

1.The West Texas Eagle, St. Louis to Dallas, Forth Worth and El Paso. Through Sleepers from New York, Chicago, etc.Much of this train was dropped in Ft. Worth, the part whcih ran on to El Paso was rather short.

2. The South Texas Eagle, from St. Louis, divided I don't remember where, perhaps Palestine, Texas, not sure. But part of it went to Houston and part to San Antonio and Laredo. It was the San Antone section of course, which had the through sleeper to Mexico City.It, too, had through sleepers from New York, perhaps Chicago. Also a slumbercoah from Baltimore to San Antonio.

You will note that the Texas Eagle, at that time, was basically a St. Louis operation. Chicago to Texas business was handled partly by other trains which no longer exist.

There were other through car operations besides the above. For one, there was a through sleeper and coach from Memphis to Dallas/Ft. Worth (that I used that several times when my sister lived in Dallas and I lived in Chattanooga) and a through Sleeper from Memphis to Houston.

So, there was a very short Texas Eagle from Memphis to Little Rock, from which the through cars listed above were transferred to the big trains when they came in from St. Louis.

There were several other extensions to it. Like I say, it was complicated.

There was a train called the Louisiana Eagle from New Orleans to Dallas/Forth Worth, which, in later years, after business was getting bad, combined with the Texas Eagle from St.Louis at Longview,TX, to points west.

There was a big Pennsylvania train called the Penn Texas which operated from New York to St. Louis and many, many of its sleepers were through cars being transferred to the Eagle in St. Louis, and to another train or two. The through sleepers from Chicago were operated on the same line we still have today with Amtrak with trains like the Ann Rutledge.

The slumbercoach referred to above was operated on Balitmore & Ohio's National Limited east of St. Louis.

In peak years the two St. Louis sections operated about 30 minutes headway from each other. In later, slimmer years, the South Texas and West Texas sections were combined into one train.

The Texas Eagle was a beautiful two-tone blue streamliner (though some pullmans were Pennsy tuscan red, and the slumbercoach was unpainted stainless steel) built about 1947, I think. It replaced a heaveyweight train called the Sunshine Special (which I am sure was just as complicated).

It was under Amtrak that the train was repositioned as a Chicago to Texas operation. As I say, before that time there were other railroads going from Chicago, with the Eagle just getting a sleeper or two.

 

[panamaclipper]

Great info, Bill. I assume those trains ran under the T&P or MoPac banner? Also, I remember in the early days of Amtrak with the Inter-American the idea was you could transfer to a Mexican train at he border and continue to Mexico City. Texas had a lot of grand trains in the heyday. Of course ATSF had its Texas Chief which I rode as a kid. And there were the Texas Zephyrs run by Burlington and FW&D. My favorite was the MKT-Frisco Texas Special. My uncle was a fireman on that train. I used to watch if fly by my granny's house in North Texas. Amtrak's Heartland Flyer runs on part of the old Texas Chief route. And there has long been talk of running a train (not likely) from Texas up to Denver along the old FW&D routes.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

We have many of the same memories!!!! Yes that was all basically a MoPac Operation except the Louisiana Eagle, and, as I recall, the route say from Longview on out to El Paso may have been T&P. T&P was very much a subsidiary of MoPac, all pretty much the same thing. But the distinction is correct and that is how I remember it. Louisiana Eagle, a T&P train; the Texas Eagle mostly MoPac except as noted above.

The pleasures that come with having an older sister who moved around a lot.....and I get to take the trains to see her. She lived in Texas, then she oblidgingly moved to San Francisco, I took full advantage of that as well, you can be sure.

 

[Steve4031]

At one point Amtrak had vague plans to run trains through to Mexico. But this was never really seriously considered.

Enjoyed al the details on the "old" texas Eagles. Lots of operational complexities.

Intersting enough, Europe still has these kinds of operations on some of its night trains. In addition, when I was in Italy during Christmas vacation, I rode an extra train from Florence to Venice that was not in the time table. Apparently, there reservaton system showed a need for an extra train, and they put some cars together, and viola! an extra train. Pretty Amazing!

 

[battalion51]

Amtrak, HINT HINT, WINK WINK, NUDGE NUDGE! :lol:

 

[wcc]

At one point Amtrak had vague plans to run trains through to Mexico. But this was never really seriously considered.

If they could have gotten Mexico to pay for some of the costs, then maybe it would have been easier for them to implement. But how many people (regular people, I mean), would ride a train there? It would certainly have been interesting though.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Here is one of the things I forgot about the old Texas Eagle. As I said, it was a highly complicated affair. There was a through pullman from Dallas to Los Angeles, Put on the West Texas Eagle at Dallas and swapped over to the Sunset Limited at El Paso.

That was a forerunner of what Amtrak has done by extending part of the TE to the SL.

I think coming back east the above sleeper may have run on secondary (largely heavyweight) trains on the same route, i.e. the Arognaut from LA to El Paso and the Westerner or whatever the seconday train on the Eagle's route was called from El Paso to Dallas.

I do know the equipment for that sleeper was usually Southern Pacific unpainted stainless steel (except for a red stripe over the windows, I believe). That mixed in with the MoPac and T&P two tone blue.

Another sleeper I remember was a through car from St. Louis to Hot Springs, It was removed from the main train somewhere during the night, don't remember where.

I am doing all this from memory. Should anybody have any serious specific questions, let me know and I can look it up at home and answer the next day. I still have all my old timetables from all over the country.

One of my favorite days in my life was as follows: In the earlier post I told that my sister lived in Dallas for awhile so I would ride the train from Chattanooga to Dallas via Memphis(thru cars Memphis to DFW). However, one time I got to return east via St. Louis, got to ride the "big" train all the way to St.Louis--my first time out of the southeast or southwest.

Spent the first part of the day at the St. Louis Zoo, the the largest I had seen up until that time. Wild animals are a secondary passion of mine.

Then spent the afternoon at the station seeing several trains(and railroads) for the first time. The Colorado Eagle(to Denver, Colorado Springs), the Zephyr Rocket(to twin cities), the Penn Texas from New York, the Abe Lincoln from Chicago for examples. Quite a day, all of it brand new to me, the zoo and the trains.

 

[panamaclipper]

It's easy to forget what a huge rail hub St. Louis was - not as big as Chicago but one of the largest in the country. It's easy to forget because the Amtrak station is so sad now.