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I got to witness that last fall on the Lincoln Service/Missouri River Runner (same tracks as TE as far as St. Louis).

The hubby and I will be doing a roundtrip Pontiac, IL to/from Ft. Worth, TX in October, so I'll have a better idea of which direction has better scenery once we get back from that trip.

The hubby & I went casual for our roundtrip on the Lincoln Service/Missouri River Runner last fall: Jogging pants + short-sleeve shirts for him, jogging pants + T-shirts for me. (Also a sweater for him and hoodie for me, because it can get a little chilly at night in the Midwest in October.)...

The NB Eaglette typically passes Dwight, IL (approx. 20 miles NE of the station stop at Pontiac, IL) sometime between Noon and 3PM, always before I see the SB Eaglette passing my office window (usually sometime around 3:15PM-3:30PM). Had I been at work today (the courthouse was closed, so our...

I think the Dwight, IL station has a lift (I've seen it in use, but not where it's stored), and that's sufficient for a small station like ours with low ridership.

That's what my family has routinely done with other trains, whether it was the Lincoln Service/Missouri River Runner boarding at our hometown (also an unmanned station), or waiting with our son in Kankakee for him to board the Illini or Saluki to return to law school in Carbondale, IL.

Maybe it's just my local Subway, but I always get a gassy tummy after eating Subway, no matter how bland the sandwich is. As to "grocery store freezer meals = Flex dining", supermarket freezer meals usually don't make me gassy, so maybe I'll survive Flex dining on the Texas Eagle this fall...

The hubby and I will be taking the Texas Eagle this fall, but we live on the route, and have an overnight planned (in Fort Worth, TX) between the southbound & northbound journeys. I haven't been an Amtrak sleeping car passenger since the old Slumbercoach days, so even the Eaglette will be an...

Been there/done that, catching the Empire Builder at Fargo, ND to get home from college in the 1970s. Not great, but better than no passenger rail connection at all.

Thanks for the link! I don't have a map in front of me, but I'm guessing that the proposed new northern terminus at Newton, KS would connect to the Southwest Chief?

It does connect with the Texas Eagle now (at Fort Worth), but I imagine what you're talking about is the route being extended to connect with additional routes (maybe the City of New Orleans to the East, or the Southwest Chief to the West or Northwest?).

Those sound like the berth sleepers I've seen in old movies, which might have been 3-tier at times!

Although the trees and shrubbery aren't on the business' property here; they're on the railroad's right-of-way (and the publicly-owned land adjacent to the power lines), and there are parking spaces on the street just N of the business parking lot which are nearly as close to the encroaching...

Someone should tell my local utility company (ComEd) that! Because the family business is next to the Lincoln Service/Texas Eagle tracks, utility trucks park in our parking lot on a regular basis to trim tree branches and other vegetation encroaching upon power lines and the railroad's...

We had some of that when IL "wanna be HSR when it grows up" was being implemented. Locally, it was complaints about the state of Illinois building a new station (using funds better spent on other things) when local ridership was quite adequately served by the existing historic station. Also...

Plenty of trains whiz past Dwight -- but most of them are freight trains. Or when I'm driving N to the next county through the next town N of me (Mazon), there are double freight tracks there, and I have sometimes had to wait for a good 15 minutes at least for not 1, but 2 freight trains to go...

I had wondered that, too, when I was booking our October trip to FTW on the Eaglette. Per Google Maps, there appear to be several restaurants within a few blocks of the station; have no personal knowledge of any of them, though. (And our hotel in FTW is only 2 blocks away!)

Now I'm having visions of the next Lincoln Service train arriving in my town, playing the jingle the ice cream trucks used to play when I was little, instead of sounding the engine's horn! ;)

If the Lincoln Service/Texas Eagle were to be moved to a different set of tracks, I suspect that my hometown (Dwight, IL) would lose passenger rail service entirely. And this would be after the state of Illinois subsidized the construction of a new (but still unmanned) Amtrak station along the...

Huevos rancheros, here we come! (eventually)