BREAKING NEWS: THE WANDERING EAGLES.

[UPTRAIN]

POPLAR BLUFF, MISSOURI-On the afternoon of Friday, May 7, 2004 at about 2:30 p.m., a southbound Union Pacific freight train carrying ballast and chemicals derailed at Hendrickson, Missouri on the former Missouri Pacific mainline. Since Amtrak's Texas Eagles use theses lines, they had to be detoured over former Cotton Belt and mo-pac tracks in extreme western Illinois and southeast Missouri. There are no scheduled stops between St. Louis Missouri and Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a distance of about 130 miles. The Eagles traveled over tracks that never see Amtrak trains and it was probably the first time Amtrak equipment visited many online communities. Many people were startled to see the shiny trains blasting through towns such as Dupo, Illinois, Praire Du Rocher, Wolf Lake, Thebes, Illmo (Scott City, Missouri) Bell City Missouri, Idalia, Dexter, Dudley, Fisk and Junland. The southbound train number 21 was supposed to arrive into Poplar Bluff shortly after 1 a.m. but arrived at 5:30 a.m. while the northbound train number 22 was scheduled to arrive after 3:00 a.m. but arrived at 7:45 a.m. (Reported by Zach Pumphery)

[Anonymous]

Wow, the trains were only off by 4 hours or so, seems they made better time than usual.

[daveklepper]

Glad they were able to detour and didn't bus the passengers . Someone was really on the ball! Dave Klepper

[UPTRAIN]

Anyone else have any comments...HELLO STL PEOPLE!!!

[vsmith]

I've always wondered when they divert a passenger train onto anoth route what do they do about passenger stops, do they bus people to other stations or does Jamtrack now only stop at the major cities.

[UPTRAIN]

Well one good thing about this is that there were no scheduled stops between STL and PB, when there is, I think they (Amtrak) try to provide bus/motercoach connections. [?][V][;)][:P][%-)][:-^]

[Anonymous]

Depending on the route of the diversion, they usually bus the intermediate pax. For example, since we're talking about the Eagle, suppose they divert 21 at Longview down the old Eagle route direct to Austin. They usually run a bus through D/FW making the stops and they catch up at either Austin or SAS. On the other hand, if it's on the Katy below FTW direct to TPL, I've seen them run no bus (and also beat the schedule by a significant amount of time).

[espeefoamer]

Why can't I ever be on a train when it gets rerouted???Especially over the Cotton Belt!

[Anonymous]

Have been--Big Sandy to TXA. And I can tell you that they definitely knew how to line and surface their switches--smooooooooooth--much much much better than the MoP.[8D]