New Orleans to Fort Worth (Guest Rewards trip)

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NativeSon5859

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Aug 6, 2003
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On Wednesday of this week I took #1 from NOL to SAS then connected with #22 up to Fort Worth. I wanted to burn some Guest Rewards points, and I figured this would be a good routing becuase I would get on a new train: Texas Eagle.

#1 departed NOL on time at 11:55am with 2 P42, 1 baggage car, and 6 Superliners (trans. sleeper, sleeper, diner, lounge, and 2 coaches). Approx. 70 passengers boarded in NOL...looked like about 15 in the sleepers and the rest in coach. Seat assignments were issued to all passengers in coach since this was going to be a really full train eventually. I was given seat #15....window seat thankfully. Lunch was served about :30 after departure...light crowd in the diner...had a good supreme pizza and a salad. Very friendly staff as usual on the Sunset. On time through Schreiver (where about 6 people got on, the most i've ever seen), New Iberia, and Lafayette (about 15 boarded here). We were one hour down in Lake Charles, where a huge crowd boarded, about 35, including lots of kids. We made up time going through Beaumont, where I found myself enjoying a cheeseburger and a Pepsi in the lower level lounge. We were only going to be about twenty minutes late into Houston but we were held in Inglewood Yard for about :45 waiting for freights to clear ahead of us. Regardless, we made excellent time in between Houston and San Antonio, and arrived SAS aprox. thirty munutes early, at about 2:30am.

Since the Eagle didn't depart until 7:00am, the kind coach attendant on the Sunset was nice enough to let me stay on the train until boarding started for the Sunset, or at about 5:00am. I got off at 4:45am and killed some time in the station before going back outide with another Pepsi in had to watch #1 head west at 5:40am, all the while listening to excellent the new Ryan Adams CD, "Easy Tiger".

I had a Roomette booked for train #22 since I was extremely tired at this point and I figured a few hours of sleep lying down would do me good. Preboarding for this very full train #22 started at 6:30am. #22 had 1 P42 and 7 Superliners this morning....transtion sleeper, sleeper, diner, lounge, and 3 coaches. On time departure at 0700 with over 70 passengers in coach plus the 10 or so in the sleeper. As soon as the lounge car opened I went in there and grabbed my complimentary continental breakfast (since the diner is closed for breakfast; the diner crew boards the train in Austin). Then I went back to my room and slept for about three hours straight. It was a good ride, although "first class service" on this train didn't include bottled water because, according to our attendant, "they put it someplace in the car but I can't find it". Also, no route guide, and no postcard, as I've seen on other trains. Not a big deal all in all but even the City of NO has this train beat in the overall Sleeper experience.

Light crowd in the diner for lunch even though the train was very full at this point (big crowds boarded in Austin and Temple). I had the pizza once again, followed by that awesome chocolate cake. By that point we were only about an ahour and a half outside of Fort Worth, running about 30 minutes late. Just five miles outside of the Fort Worth station we came to a dead stop for 45 minutes waiting for freights to clear ahead of us. Once we got going, we only went a mile, then stopped again for ten minutes. Finally, we made it to Fort Worth, about an hour and a half late.

I then took the Trinity Railway Express commuter train from the station to the DFW airport station, took a shuttle from the train station to the south remote parking area, took another shuttle from the south remote parking area to terminal D, then took a plane back to New Orleans. ;)
 
Was there not a sleeper on the rear of the 22 train as well? I thought the through sleeper from the Sunset would be tacked onto the rear, even if it was not a Sunset day.
 
printman2000 said:
Was there not a sleeper on the rear of the 22 train as well? I thought the through sleeper from the Sunset would be tacked onto the rear, even if it was not a Sunset day.
Click to expand...
No, if there is no westbound Sunset, then there is no through sleeper to tack onto the rear. So 4 days a week, the Eagle runs to Chicago without a through sleeper on the bottom.
 
I seem to remember you may be right. I took the Texas Eagle a few months ago and had the sleeper on the rear. And if I remember correctly this was NOT a day the Sunset arrived into SAS. I understood this to be the way for everyday now. They simply tacked on the sleeper and coach from the Sunset, and on the non-Sunset days, there was always a set waiting anyways. Now I could be totally wrong. The last time I went through SAS was when the Eagle still carried two sleepers, one to connect with the Sunset on those days. And on the non-Sunset days, it just had one.

On another note, I've yet to figure out why they make you change buses when going from the TRE station to DFW. I think thats a reason why not many people use the TRE to get to the airport. But thats an airport thing I think. But a few years from now, we'll have light rail and commuter directly into the terminal area of DFW. I'm pretty excited to see that!
 
I think they changed the consist layout of the Texas Eagle/City of New Orleans recently, but they might have switched it back. In any event, until the consist change a few months ago (I don't know if it's different now), the consist for the Texas Eagle was the same every day. The train always ran with a transition sleeper, diner, lounge, (I think) three coaches, and a standard sleeper. On 421/422 days, the sleeper at the rear was the 30-line, and on non-Sunset days, it was the 20-line.

The reason for this was that they wanted the sleeper to consistently be in the same location on the train regardless of whether or not it was a Sunset day, because they wanted to keep things simple for passengers and station agents.
 
rmadisonwi said:
I think they changed the consist layout of the Texas Eagle/City of New Orleans recently, but they might have switched it back. In any event, until the consist change a few months ago (I don't know if it's different now), the consist for the Texas Eagle was the same every day. The train always ran with a transition sleeper, diner, lounge, (I think) three coaches, and a standard sleeper. On 421/422 days, the sleeper at the rear was the 30-line, and on non-Sunset days, it was the 20-line.
The reason for this was that they wanted the sleeper to consistently be in the same location on the train regardless of whether or not it was a Sunset day, because they wanted to keep things simple for passengers and station agents.
Click to expand...
The one I was on had a transtion sleeper, sleeper (my car), diner, lounge, and three coaches on the rear.

When I was in Fort Worth I saw southbound #21, which looked like this: transition sleeper, sleeper, diner, lounge, and 2 coaches. That one also had a baggage car while the one I was on did not.
 
NativeSon5859 said:
rmadisonwi said:
I think they changed the consist layout of the Texas Eagle/City of New Orleans recently, but they might have switched it back. In any event, until the consist change a few months ago (I don't know if it's different now), the consist for the Texas Eagle was the same every day. The train always ran with a transition sleeper, diner, lounge, (I think) three coaches, and a standard sleeper. On 421/422 days, the sleeper at the rear was the 30-line, and on non-Sunset days, it was the 20-line.

The reason for this was that they wanted the sleeper to consistently be in the same location on the train regardless of whether or not it was a Sunset day, because they wanted to keep things simple for passengers and station agents.
Click to expand...
The one I was on had a transtion sleeper, sleeper (my car), diner, lounge, and three coaches on the rear.

When I was in Fort Worth I saw southbound #21, which looked like this: transition sleeper, sleeper, diner, lounge, and 2 coaches. That one also had a baggage car while the one I was on did not.
Click to expand...
#58 & 59 are the "turn" of #21 & 22. In other words they are the same equipment. When #58 hits Chicago at 9 a.m. they service it and send it out as #21 that evening. The usual consist is one engine, the transistion sleeper, the revenue sleeper, diner, lounge and usually two coaches. When #22 hits Chicago they service the train set and send it south to New Orleans as #59. A baggage car is a rare commodity today; I would not want to know the mileage they have racked up for fear of the wheels falling off.
 
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