All is peaceful and quiet in the morning at the Houston Amtrak station. The clouds and monsoon rains of yesterday have cleared. Then the crowds arrived. Here Ed Dickens and the steam crew are giving a live Facebook feed. Next, the #2 arrives a little late from San Antonio.
On Monday, before the locomotive pulled into the station track, they uncoupled a good part of the train and left it on the main line. Then another diesel pulled those car by and pushed them back into the station track leaving a 65 foot gap between the Kenefick and the pilot of the 4014. The display car where visitors filed through to see a display about the history of the Union Pacific. Here is the map provided to us volunteers to show the layout so we could report to our duty stations. The first afternoon I directed auto traffic in the parking lot until the train showed up. Then I was able to get a few photos. On Tuesday for the first half of the day I was doing crowd control at the front of the locomotive. Preventing folks from trying to climb up on the pilot or set their kids on it to pose for photos. They could stand in front of it and even put one foot on the first pilot step and a hand on the grab for a photo but that was it. I probably took a few hundred photos, but of the visitors with their cameras and phones standing in front of the locomotive. Did not get many with my own camera. Then the second half of the day I handed out masks to those who did not have one before entering the experience display car. The total count for the day was over 4400 people through the car. I got a lunch from the City of Denver dining car and got to keep the official Union Pacific yellow reflective safety vest that I wore for my efforts.