Amtrak, TXDOT to study new service between Shreveport and D/FW
May 1, 2012 / Updated August 29, 2012
Passenger Rail
Amtrak, its Texas Eagle seen here in Longview, TX, and TXDOT are studying the feasibility for new service between Bossier City-Shreveport and Dallas/Fort Worth. – CHRISTOPHER FOX/Cowcatcher Magazine
Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have agreed on the scope of a feasibility study for new Amtrak service between Bossier City-Shreveport in Northwest Louisiana and along the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.
TxDOT and Amtrak officials joined members of the East Texas Corridor Council in March to recognize the start of work to study new service by conventional trains with a maximum speed of 79 m.p.h..
Amtrak will estimate order-of-magnitude capital requirements and operating costs needed to provide state-sponsored passenger rail service, with trains making up to seven intermediate stops and operating up to two daily round-trips.
The study will consider potential schedules, operating costs, revenue and ridership, railcar and locomotive requirements, and capital needs for infrastructure improvements.
Union Pacific Railroad, which owns much of the route, will determine rail capacity.
The rail segment between Marshall, TX, and Fort Worth is served now by Amtrak’a Texas Eagle as part of its Chicago-San Antonio/Los Angeles route with one daily frequency in each direction and intermediate stops.
North American railroads have hauled coal in quantity ever since the anthracite roads were built on the East Coast. Decades later and despite many changes that have diminished production, coal remains a top (but declining) commodity. While it has weathered shifts in power generation and other factors leading to its decline, coal still accounts for 28 percent of total rail tonnage and 12 percent of revenue. Watch a coal trains roll by and you’ll notice that most cars are painted a stripe or block of color on one end. The color doesn’t matter, but the painted end has a rotary coupler, the non-painted end a solid drawbar. Learn how this combination of couplers enable railroads to move coal efficiently.
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After almost 20 years of top-line service, the Pennsylvania Railroad's St. Louisan and New Yorker were rechristened Spirit of St. Louis after the custom-built Ryan monoplane in which Charles Lindbergh made the first transatlantic flight. PRR’s advertising and publicity forces wasted no time capitalizing on transatlantic frenzy. The Spirit’s christening was celebrated June 15, 1927, less than a month after Lindbergh’s May 21 landing in Paris. Take a ride on the train in the Cowcatcher's ongoing series, "The Golden Age of Passenger Travel."
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