National Train Day, WPK - TPA - WPK on 91 & 92

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AmtrakWPK

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Casselberry, Florida
Had the largest crowd I've ever seen at WPK getting off the train and also the largest group getting on. There were 40 pax detraining at WPK from 91 and 40 pax just with TPA as a destination, plus a lot of others for other stations, (91 continues all the way down to MIA). Large crowd at ORL as usual, and also quite a few at Kissimmee.

Tampa Union Stations ( TUS ) was packed, there were a bunch of exhibitors, including a couple of fairly nice model train setups, and a representative from the Rail Museum in Parrish Florida (SE of Tampa). They have a bunch of rolling stock and 3 or 4 operating Diesel-Electric Locos, and runs excursions on Saturday and Sunday every week (and you can rent time on their locos to be taught how to be an engineer on them, actually running an operating, moving engine !! ---no, not pulling passengers--- ). TUS was a VERY busy and VERY noisy place.

We (Wendy and I) arrived on 91 only about 15 minutes late as I recall, and shortly thereafter somebody on an acoustic guitar with a pickup and amp system and a microphone started playing up on the stage they had set up for the festivities, and it was so loud we just left. We walked a couple blocks with another railfan, and got on the TECO trolley (electric), took it to Ybor City, walked the two or three blocks to the Columbia Restaurant, had a wonderful and affordable lunch (that restaurant has been there since 1905 and is magnificent inside, with wonderful food). We then walked back to the trolley line, took it for a round-trip of it's route, then walked the two blocks or so back to TUS, walked around the exhibits again and talked to the folks for awhile.

92 arrived pretty much on time, actually, although we left a bit late. Big crowd, sold-out train. 92 deposited us back at WPK about 15 minutes late. All in all, a wonderful and inexpensive day, especially since we bought the tickets on the day that you could get them for buy-one, get the second free, so total ticket cost was $22.00 WPK-TPA-WPK for the two of us, and just gas for my relatively fuel-efficient Focus would have cost that much at least (and wouldn't have been NEAR as much fun).

Besides the way-too-loud music, we were disappointed that the promised static/tourable display Superliner +P42DC ended up actually being just a single-level coach plus the loco, which, of course, was the sort of equipment we had just come over on, so we didn't bother.

The coaches we were on for both 91 and 92 were the ones with Two 120VAC outlets at each seat, and Wendy was sorry she didn't bring her cellphone charger because it ran out of battery and shut itself off about halfway back on 92. I took some pix of the TUS exhibits and crowds, and the trolley and the manufacturer's brass serial number plate on the trolley, I may get around to uploading all that in a week or so.

Had a wonderful day, nice to have 92 running on the two-hours-later schedule so that we can again have several hours in TPA and still return the same day. Now if we could just get them to start 91 an hour earlier and 92 one more hour later, we might manage to finagle the mass transit bus systems in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties and make it all the way to Clearwater Beach for a couple of hours swimming and snorkeling, and still come back the same day (sigh...) Guess we'll still have to drive if we want to do that.....
 
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