In 1981, I rode the Houston section of the Inter-American from Houston to Temple where it met the section coming up from Laredo on its way to Chicago. Here the train is ready to board in Houston as the morning sun is about to peek over the locomotive. Just south of Somerville, Texas on Santa Fe tracks with a siding on the left. I was at the back door of the Amfleet car I was riding on.
Great nostalgic pics! Brings back memories of all my old Kodak Instamatic pics I took in the 80's! $19.95 camera and a couple rolls of film for less than a meal at McDonald's today!
July 13, 2017 in Bonsack, Virgina. Test train on the DC to Roanoke, Virginia route before it was inaugurated.
We might have a new sub-thread here. From 10/10/1984 at Montgomery, AL, an Amtrak train runs a route from Birmingham to Mobile, testing for what became the Gulf Breeze five years later. The train was a failure and after 4-1/2 years, it came to an end. That's the former GM&O tower at Bell Street, manned at the time. It was razed long ago.
These were taken in the evening. The Surfliner is heading towards San Diego and the end of the line before she heads back north.
The #4, Southwest Chief in Albuquerque. April 9, 2014. The second unit needs its wind shield washed for sure. Although normally nobody would be riding in there. A funny story a friend told me last night about riding in a second unit. May have been pulling my leg but it sounded good. He was volunteering to work with the Union Pacific steam crew on excursion trains a while back. On this trip they were dead heading a train from Cheyenne to Denver with the Centennial on the point and an Amtrak locomotive tucked in behind it. Due to some scheduling the crew had timed out and were replaced by a new crew who had never worked a passenger train before. Steve Lee grabbed my friend and put him in the second unit. He was shown a light and a button. Whenever they exceeded a set speed, I think it was 90 MPH for too long the light would come on and he was to push the button to override things or the engine would shut everything down. Steve then went up to the Centennial, told the new guys to sit back and he took over. Cranked that dude up and they flew to Denver. Bill was constantly mashing the overspeed button.