From: weinstoc@sei.cmu.edu (Chuck Weinstock)
Subject: Trip Report: UP3985, Kansas City to Houston
Organization: The Software Engineering Institute
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 15:29:42 GMT


As you may recall, I posted a somewhat negative report of my trip between San
Jose and Denver last month.  The negativeness was mostly the result of a
disasterous Amtrak segment (a 7 hour late #26), and over assertive people in
some of the sponsoring organizations.  On the balance, though, I enjoyed the
trip and was *mostly* looking forward to the next leg of my three part visit
with the UP 3985 train.

Late afternoon on Monday, August 10th, I boarded a United Airlines 727 for
Chicago where I connected to an identical aircraft for Kansas City.  Due to
bad weather in the East we were late leaving, and arrived in Kansas City
around 9pm.  The air and heat outside was oppresive...about what I expected
for Missouri in August.  My friend was waiting for me at the gate and we drove
over to the Budgetel in North Kansas City.  After a restful, but short, night,
we piled into the car for the trip to the boarding site.  This was the Parc
Place hotel and shuttle buses took us from there to the train.  Although it
was at least an hour before departure time, the train was ready for us to
board and we quickly found our seats in the Texas Eagle.  The weather outside
was terrific...a front had gone through during the night and we would be
blessed with temperatures 10 to 20 degrees less than normal for the whole
trip...and little rain.

The train left a little late and snaked its way out of Kansas City onto the
Missouri Pacific.  This first segment was being hosted by the U.P. Historical
Society, but staffed by members of Camerail.  They did an excellent job of
keeping things going smoothly.  We soon settled into what would become our
daily routine of mostly high speed (60ish) running, with two photo runbys in
the morning and two in the afternoon, a PR stop in a town in the morning, a
service stop at mid-day, and another PR stop in the afternoon, before arriving
at our destination for the evening.  This first day we were plesantly
surprised to learn that the morning donuts were "on the house".  They had
brought enough to feed an army of railfans and didn't run out until late in
the day.  The box lunches were also complimentary and quite good.  The only
thing we needed to purchase in the food department were soft drinks and good
UP popcorn.  The location of the photo runbys were almost uniformly poor on
all four days of the trip.  This probably couldn't be helped given:

- the terrain.
- Steve Lee's desire to avoid doing runbys where chasers could get to us (e.g.
not along side a highway).
- Someones decision to avoid doing them near towns or grain elevators or... no
doubt for safety reasons.

We finally learned why Steve doesn't back up enough and doesn't completely
runby the crowd.  He doesn't want to have to bother with the dispatcher in
Omaha and call attention to what we were doing.  As long as he doesn't exit
the block we're in, he apparently doesn't have to.

Anyway, the train pulled in more or less on time to Coffeyville, Kansas, where
we spent the first night.  The shuttles were small, but they efficiently got
us to the ex-Best Western Fountain Plaza, easily the worst lodging of the
trip.  Checkin took forever, but I soon found my room and turned on the TV.  I
was hoping to watch the Pirates - Mets game on ESPN.  Unfortunately, my
set wouldn't tune to ESPN (other friend's had sets that did).  Before settling
down in a friends room to watch the game we went to dinner at a family
restaurant across the parking lot.  Nothing spectacular, but an ok meal.

The next morning, I volunteered to be the early ariser to pin down seats for
our group of 6 in the Texas Eagle.  I took the first bus over to the train,
and managed to get some of the crew to place my bags on the appropriate
seats...boarding wasn't to be for an hour.  While we waited, a UP directors
special passed through with some more of the passenger fleet, also enroute to
Houston and the Republican Convention.  We figure that they made Houston
before we left McAllister the next morning.  The Wednesday and Thursday
segments were sponsored by a coalition of Oklahoma railfan organizations.
They did a good job, but weren't as well organized as the other group.  (Their
lunches were the best of the lot.)  Again, a very pleasant day of travel
through the Oklahoma countryside.  Again, a number of runbys and a service
stop.  Speaking of runbys, you long time readers of rec.railroad may recall my
visit to the St. Louis NRHS convention a few years ago, where I got throughly
eaten by chiggers.  This time, thanks partially to some spray that Pete Bretz
had the foresight to bring along, I was able to avoid being bitten even once!
Anyway, the train arrived early into McAllister, Oklahoma (on the Katy) and we
boarded perhaps the most interesting (stupid) shuttle bus scheme I've ever
encountered.  You've heard of hub and spoke in the airline business?  We'll
this was a hub and spoke shuttle system.  We got on buses which took us to the
fairgrounds outside of town.  This is where the locals had all parked.  The
motel vans were to meet us there, but since we were early they weren't ready
for us.  The upshot is that we wasted an hour standing around the fairgrounds
before someone finally found a bus to take us to the motels.

This evening's lodging was at a Comfort Inn, a very nice property.  We had
dinner next door at the Day's Inn and enjoyed a real good chicken fried steak.
The only downer was the smell of chlorine from the indoor pool adjacent.  The
rest of the evening was spent playing about half a game of Rail Baron before
retiring early.  Getting to the train the next morning was a lot easier than
getting to the motel the night before.  Boarding, again, was about 30 minutes
before train time, and we left a few minutes late.  Today we were headed for
Ft. Worth.  An uneventful day (the best kind), highlighted by the intricate
maneuver that got us into the T&P station in Ft. Worth.  We had Tower 55 tied
up for over half an hour and actually heard a Santa Fe freight make a
reservation to get through the interlocking!  A friend met us at train side
and shuttled us to the Worthington Hotel, a nice place with oversized rooms.
After a cocktail in the bar, we went across the street to a BBQ place and then
back to the hotel to finish the Rail Baron game (which I won for the first
time in recent memory).  The only downer of the evening was that the hotel was
also inhabited by teenage bible students with predictable results.  A call to
the front desk finally quieted them down at 1:30am, but it made the stay
unpleasant.

Not only were we tired from the bible students the night before, but the train
was leaving an hour earlier (at 7am) necessitating a 5am wakeup.  Our friend
was kind enough to shuttle us back to the train at 6am, and we boarded and
were underway on time.  After additional maneuvering through Tower 55 we were
on our way to Houston on the MKT.  Today's segment was sponsored by the Gulf
Coast NRHS, and they were extremely competent even though they had little
experience running such a trip.  Things went very smoothly without any of the
over assertiveness that characterized the Feather River folks.  You could tell
the GC people had their act together by the fact that they were extremely
disciplined in their use of the radio.  Most groups overuse the radio
tremendously.  These guys would say what needed to be said and then shut up!
On this day we had three runbys, two of which were excellent (though I only
got off for one of them).  The last runby was the fastest one of the entire
trip (starting in San Jose).  I think Steve got her up to 60 during that
runby.  We had an extended service/PR stop at College Station right between
the massive football and baseball stadiums of Texas A&M (on SP tracks).  This
was the only service stop that they let us off the train during the whole
trip.  We walked over to see the Amtrak shack (literally) and to get some ice
cream at the Circle K.  Then reboarded because it was HOT.

We arrived at Spring Yard, north of Houston, more or less on time, and
encountered the only foul up of the day (and it was minor).  The shuttle buses
were unlabelled as to where they were going (one of three different places)
and, worse, the drivers didn't know either.  This soon got settled and an hour
or so later I was dropped off at Hobby Airport where I caught a shuttle to my
hotel.  Early the next morning I flew home on a Delta flight thorough CVG.

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip and came home feeling relaxed and rested (in
spite of early morning departures).  Stay tuned for part three of this
travelogue, when I return from riding with UP 3985 from Little Rock back to
Kansas City.


Chuck Weinstock				weinstock@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute		(412) 268-7719
Carnegie Mellon University		(412) 268-5758 (Fax)
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Newsgroups: rec.railroad