The Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited

The Pecos River. this is the Mexico - US border in Texas

Eastern Texas

Looks like a cemetary for tall people . . . but it is really a bunch of horseshoe pits some where in Texas

Inside Chicago Union station out by the trains.

Well this was my longest trip of all, almost 3 full days on the train. I really enjoyed just sitting back and relaxing for the whole time. I traveled from Chicago, down through Illinois, into St Louis MO. It was dark before we got to St Louis But we still got to see the St Louis Arch as we crossed the Mississippi River. The train then headed south to Little Rock, Arkansas. I did not see any of Arkansas, as I woke up in Texas. The train spent over 30 hours going through Texas, from the rolling hills, trees, and forests of North East Texas, down to the plains around Dallas and Ft Worth. Then we headed to Austin and San Antonio. It was very pretty country, and so different hour by hour and day to day. The train parked for 6 hours in San Antonio overnight to hook us up to the back of the Sunset Limited early in the AM. That was interesting to observe. They took the sleeper I was in and 1 coach car and hooked them to the back of the Sunset Limited train. So now I am riding in the very back car instead of near the front where the sleepers usually are. It is cool as we can see out the back door down the back tracks now. The sleeper cars do not matter which way they run, as they are ambidextrous in their use. However, I noticed in the AM that the people in coach were all riding backwards! About midmorning the car attendant came in and turned all the seats around to face forward! It was cool to see, I did not know they could do that at all.
The high desert of West Texas was cool to see also. We climbed to 4600 feet in the desert without really realizing it. We came very close to Mexico also a number of times…. Within about 100’ just across the Pecos River… saw a few border patrol hiding by the tracks watching the river. We also crossed a bridge that was almost 400 feet above the Pecos River. When we pulled into El Paso we were again about 200 feet from Mexico. We pulled out of there in the evening and overnight went all the way through New Mexico and Arizona and into California where I detrained in Ontario, getting ready to get on another train headed to Chicago again. Two more legs to go and I arrive home Thursday afternoon.