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By H Martin Swan
As printed in the January 1999 Northstar News
Thursday November 5th, the Empire Builder #8 was on time but I wasn't. As a result, Gerald and Olive Schuler had to wait for my arrival at the Midway Amtrak Station. Gerald is the National Director for the Pacific Northwest Chapter NRHS. He and his wife attended the St. Paul BOD back in 1996 and now we would be traveling together from St. Paul to Kansas City. Amtrak has horrid and totally inconvenient schedules from St. Paul to KC. They require a night in Chicago or St. Louis in EACH direction. For the fun of it, I had entered Amtrak's web site and asked it to prepare an itinerary for me from St. Paul to Kansas City. The response was that I should travel on the Empire Builder to Chicago, change to the Texas Eagle and go to Los Angeles, change to the Southwest Chief which would take me to KC. Sounds like a fun trip but a bit time consuming!
The Schulers and I had decided to rent a car. Budget had a good deal. $200 for a week, less 10% for AAA, unlimited mileage and the car could be returned to the Amtrak Station. The trip down I-35 went without incident and we arrived at the Holiday Inn in Lexena, KS, just after sundown. The Holiday Inn was just off I-35 so everything was going as smooth as silk.
We registered and after dinner I set up Emblem sales. On Friday, the host chapter offered two trips with an option to take only the afternoon trip. The afternoon offering was the Midland Railroad; those of us only taking that trip being bussed out from the Hotel. I was offered a ride by the Chapter President and we took a side trip to review an industrial line. The Midland's claim to fame is a working E-8 painted in Rock Island original colors (some of the colors were off a bit, but the idea came across), a RS-2 in MKT bright red colors and a RS-2 in New York Central lightening stripe colors. There were several photo runbys and then the crew of the Midland asked us to stand in front of the engine so they could have a group photo of our group. That evening I had a staff meeting and thus missed the first part of the Chapters slide show presentation. The second half was a sound / slide coordinated show of railroads of Indiana! While it was somewhat surprising that a BOD in KS/MO would have a slide show on the railroads of Indiana, it turned out to be a wonderful presentation, concentrating on the Monon and L&N, but with all the other lines getting some time. There were a great many first generation diesel shots which this writer truly enjoyed.
Saturday, from the point of view of the Kansas City Chapter, was the day from Hell! If it could go wrong, it would go wrong! The plan was: Leave Hotel on busses at 8:30 am and go to Amtrak Station; board KCS Executive Train and leave at 10:00 am for Amsterdam MO; eat a prepared-on-board lunch while train was in Amsterdam: leave Amsterdam at about 1:00 pm for arrival at hotel about 3:30 pm and plenty of time for the Pre-BOD meeting scheduled to start at 4:00 pm.
Well it didn't quite happen that way. The day was dark and rainy. We did in fact leave the hotel by bus at 8:30 pm and we did arrive at the Amtrak Station in plenty of time for the scheduled boarding. There was even a jazz band waiting to greet us. From this point, however, it all went downhill - at least in-so-far as what was planned. Do not for one second think that I did not have a great time this day regardless of all the troubles which occurred.
Because of the floods in central Kansas, the KCS was handling a lot of detour traffic over its line. The KCS Executive Train was trapped in the KCS yard until at least one freight train was able to depart. Due to this, it didn't arrive Amtrak station until 11:00 am. The train pulled into the track closest to the station next to Amtrak #4, the Southwest Chief, who had come in about 10:10 am (about 2 and 1/2 hours late). We loaded and the train moved merrily down the track. We were all waving at the people on AMT 4. Then we ground to a stop. It appears that Amtrak was fouling the lead. And so we sat and sat and sat. We watched Amtrak hard-hat types standing around conferring conferring conferring conferring. It appears that there was an air problem with one or two of the mail handling cars and they couldn't fix it. Finally, the decision was made to cut the problem cars out of the train. Whether that decision was made locally or in Washington I cannot say, but it was high time some decision was made. Amtrak moved, broke the train and dropped the cars.
Meanwhile we were suppose to be at Amsterdam at about this time and eating lunch. Since we were still in the KC depot and no telling when we would get to Amsterdam they started serving. About 30 people at a time were sent to the dining room car where they went through a buffet line. After filling your plate with veggies, various salads, chicken breast, stir fry, potatoes and dessert, you then went into the dining area where a long mahogany table was placed in the center of the car for banquet style sitting. The food, prepared by the train's chief, was excellent. Finally Amtrak left around 12:45 pm. We moved forward 10 feet and stopped. Now we had to wait for a BNSF freight train to get out of the way. At 1:05 pm we finally started to move. I am told we went through some extremely rare mileage leaving KC. When we finally got on the KCS trackage outside the yard we started to tear down the track. Then we came to a stop and waited. After awhile we started up again and started to tear down the track and then we stopped and waited. Appears there was an underpowered freight train ahead of us and it kept setting off the detectors which required an on the ground inspection of the train. At this point the Kansas City Chapter Officers were ready to throw their bodies underneath the train. Wouldn't do much good since we weren't moving but they would have been dry.
At about 3:00 pm the KC Chapter and the KCS gave up. We had gotten all the way out to milepost 14 (Amsterdam was about MP 61). The train was backed up for 2 miles until we entered a passing siding. The main was occupied by a KCS freight. As soon as we cleared the freight passed and the engines of our train cut off and ran around to the rear. It was cold and it was raining but I was on the platform of the Business car watching all of this action. The engines hooked up and we started back to KC getting into the station about 5:30 and the Hotel at about 6:00 pm.
It is an awful shame something like this happened. The KC Chapter had planned on this tour for almost 2 years. They had an excess of the needed amount of busses. They had a jazz band playing. Everything was worked out and then BOOM everything blew up. The Directors were most understanding. This has happened to almost all of us one time or another. The general public might have been upset but the Directors weren't. You make the best of it. I got to see Amtrak #4(a real long look-see), I got to see and ride in the KCS Executive train. I got a delicious lunch on the train. I got some very close shots of the engines. I saw at least 10 freights in KC and on the road. And the afternoon pre-BOD meeting was canceled!!! We all had an adventure; not precisely the adventure we were planning on, but an adventure nevertheless.
That basically ended the entertainment part of the BOD meeting. The Board of Directors meeting was Sunday morning and after business was finished, the Shulers and I headed up I-35. It will be awhile before I forget this particular BOD meeting. The next NRHS BOD meeting will be in Chicago this spring. I plan to attend, representing Northstar Chapter as I will this summer at Sacramento.
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