Austin, Texas - 1981 - plus the train ride there and back

[Robert Pence]

Austin, Texas, 1981 plus the train ride there and back

I thought it might be nice ro resurrect this thread from a few years ago, to complement some of the recent Austin threads and help people appreciate how much Austin has changed in 30 years.

In May 1981, I traveled to Austin, Texas from Fort Wayne, Indiana by Amtrak. Between Fort Wayne and Chicago I took a seat in a roomette. It cost only a few dollars more than a seat in a coach and provided a quiet, more comfortable ride. Amtrak discontinued that practice when demand for sleeping-car space began to sometimes exceed availability, and because some rude and self-absorbed passengers abused the privilege by using the towels and washcloths and sometimes even using the beds.

A roomette seat was especially nice when returning to Fort Wayne from Chicago, because the trip was at night. In coaches the bright overhead lights were kept on so that the crew wouldn't have to wake passengers when they arrived in Fort Wayne, and it was impossible to see out the windows because of the reflection. In a roomette, I could turn off the light and shut the door and enjoy the nighttime views.

All photos Copyright © 2005 by Robert E Pence

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The Heritage sleeper roomette's washbasin folds down from the wall for use, and stows out of the way when not needed.
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Arriving in Chicago
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Chicago Union Station
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Long before 9/11, this was the first time I was admonished against taking pictures in a station
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Power for the train to Texas. I stopped to ask the engineer a question, and got an invitation to come up and see the cab.
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Superliners were new then. I had ridden Heritage coaches and sleepers before, but this was my first time inside a Superliner sleeper
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Settled in for the long haul
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Joliet.
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St. Louis Amshack – a sorry replacement for magnificent Union Station.
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The train on the other track, with the Amfleet coaches, was the Mule, a train that ran between St. Louis and Kansas City.
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Texarkana
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Rolling across Texas. A storm the previous night had knocked out the signaling system in the Longview-Marshall area, and we ran at much-reduced speed for many miles.
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In that era, the Missouri Pacific (MoPac) was worthy of its screaming eagle herald. Their mainline track was good, and their freight trains were some of the fastest I had seen.
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Coming into Dallas
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Fort Worth Dallas, Dealey Plaza & Texas Schoolbook Depository. Thanks LSyd & Rail Claimore for the correction.
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We had to wait a little while for the northbound train to arrive before we could head south on the single track to Temple
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Santa Fe depot in Temple, Texas
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Southbound, two cars for Houston were switched out at Temple. Northbound, they were switched in here.
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I don't have pictures of my arrival in Austin, because a heavy rain started just as I got off the train. My aunt's housekeeper drove me to the airport to pick up my rental car, and as we headed for the house the rain turned into a torrential downpour. We parked atop a bridge for quite a while to wait it out. The next morning on the news I saw that flash floods had done terrible damage, and three people had died when their car was caught in flood waters in an area that we had driven through just minutes before.
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The view from my aunt's back yard. The blotchy colors in the sky were a result of the film getting wet; the weather was hot, and I was keeping my film in a jar in an ice chest as I drove around the area. I dropped one roll into the ice/water as I changed film.
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Joseph J. Mansfield Dam (1938, height extended in 1941), 278 feet high, impounds the waters of the Lower Colorado River to form sixty-mile-long Lake Travis.
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Railroad action around the station before my departure for home. MKT stood for Missouri-Kansas-Texas, affectionately known as the Katy. After abandonment of 200-plus miles of Katy right-of-way across Missouri, Edward D. Jones purchased that segment and donated it for conversion to a bike trail known as the Katy Trail.
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Austin's Amtrak Station, so new then that it had the alkali smell of fresh concrete.
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The Amtrak train was late arriving in Austin from San Antonio, and north of Austin we came up behind a stalled freight train on the Santa Fe and lost even more time.
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Back in Temple, where we picked up the two cars from Houston
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Headed north to Fort Worth
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By the time we left Dallas in the evening, we had accumulated forty-five minutes in delays.
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The ride over the MoPac that night was the fastest I've ever gone outside the Northeast Corridor. My sleeper was the first car benind the locomotives, and when the engineer blew the air horn for the crossings in the small towns, the doubling-up of the Doppler effect made the echo coming back off the grain elevators eerily shrill. The scenery was really flying by, and the ride was smooth and steady. We arrived in St. Louis ten minutes early the next morning.
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Headed for Chicago past a familiar landmark. On the last segment of the trip, every seat was full and some people were standing or sitting in the aisles.
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I could admit that I messed up on this shot and delete it, or I could say that it's art that conveys speed and motion, and leave it in. I think I'll call it art. Pretend you don't know better.
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That's all, folks..

[ColDayMan]

Wowzers!!!

[urbanactivist]

WOW... just AMAZING!! Thank you for sharing these awesome photos with us!! Great to see how the cities were then and compare them with now.

[OhioGuy]

Very cool, Robert!

[Raining Inside]

The main thing I noticed was how lame Dallas's skyline was prior to the '80s boom.

[mrnyc]

^ yeah and funny how austin's looked pretty much the same until just fairly recently -- big changes in these texas city skylines -- thx rob!

[xzmattzx]

Nice pictures. Your stories of train travel and the pictures of the scenery are a nice look into history.

[diskojoe]

Always a pleasure to view your threads. thx for sharing.

[mthq]

Great stuff again man!

I know we have some Austinites who have shots from this angle in the present day. I'd love to see the comparison between then and now:

http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810602-04.jpg

[Thundertubs]

These journeys into the recent past are a real treat. Thanks, Rob.

[whatsthepoint13]

WOW! One of the neatest threads I've seen in a long time!

[Centropolis]

I definitely remember this thread. Those shots of St. Louis, particular the amshack with the men, and like any images of this town that have struck a personal chord for tangible or intangible reasons, burned a lasting image into my brain. That and the railroad man north of Austin tacked to the railcar with his red cap because I've seen that man in Missouri, so to speak, and he may have been missing an arm. I grew up with lots of men without arms.

forgot about this one

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This one for some reason reminds me of seeing an RV, albeit I think near the Poplar Street Bridge to the south, parked on the levee and people had ropes tied around their waists as they cooled off in the Mississippi. Just something about how for all the faults of the riverfront here, its somewhat uncontrolled and strange things still happen that are good.

[Sulley]

Incredible. It's like a time machine.

[LSyd]

awesome!!! all that's still there in Temple. and that first shot of "Fort Worth" is Dallas.

i'm glad they reclad this building next to the Driskill

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-

[Shawn]

Great, great thread. I was born in 81, and I have a real thing for photos from this time period, whether personal shots like these or advertising spreads I find in old magazines or online. There's just something about the grainy quality of color photography from the mid 70s through the mid 80s which captures that time's zeitgeist so well.

[Buckeye Native 001]

These look like they were just taken yesterday. Superb quality :tup:

[arbeiter]

I grew up not 10 minutes from this very spot:

http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810603-03.jpg

[CastleScott]

Nice thread Robert, yep those Superliners have aged well and I remember travelling on them in 81 to Burlington Iowa and back. Have you travelled Amtrak lately?

Scott

[plinko]

This thread is wonderful for a variety of reasons.

Way too many people in this country have no concept of what it's like to see the US via Amtrak. It's cumbersome, expensive, many times inconvenient, but I wouldn't trade the 3 trips I've taken from Detroit to Phoenix in '92, '93 & '94 (yes, Phoenix once had Amtrak) for any airplane ride I've taken. Just a totally different way to see things.

Beyond that, your photos are great. Are they scanned slides perchance? They have that quality to them. Love the old Dallas skyline shots. Right before the explosion of post-modern towers.

[llamaorama]

Awesome!

Funny how Austin looked like a bigger city than it was back then, while Dallas looked so anemic. Cool to see old Mopac and MKT trains around the city too...I guess in those days more of the rails in East Austin were still used by regular freights as opposed to the short line now. Though there is a brand new spur out with rolling stock on it I noticed driving to school a few months ago on 290 out in Manor so I guess they can't be all that dead.

You probably wouldn't remember, but were the massive cement factories along the line between Austin and San Antonio built yet in 1981?(they look somewhat modern compared to most big industrial plants you see). Maybe that's what was holding up your train, I see hoppers filled with gravel. Living in San Marcos that's what comes through town day and night.

[hookem]

Just fantastic photos, thanks so much for posting them.

I grew up not 10 minutes from this very spot:

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Is that tumbleweed hill? Kind of looks like it, but I don't recall the parallel road where that bus is.. also can't imagine city bus service out there back then.

[pj3000]

Robert E Pence, you are one cool dude.

Thanks for putting these up again.

[FREKI]

Awesome stuff mate - thanks for sharing - it's really cool to see pics of such quality from the past :)

I'm guessing you carried many rolls of film with you :)

[Raining Inside]

Just fantastic photos, thanks so much for posting them.



Is that tumbleweed hill? Kind of looks like it, but I don't recall the parallel road where that bus is.. also can't imagine city bus service out there back then.

There was a long driveway parallel to the road that went to a restaurant called the Tumbleweed. It burned down in the early to mid '80s.

[hookem]

There was a long driveway parallel to the road that went to a restaurant called the Tumbleweed. It burned down in the early to mid '80s.

Wow, cool to know. I moved to Austin in '89, so it must have already been gone. Then the bus in the picture might be a charter or tour bus? I remember UT clubs would charter buses for a trip out to the Salt Lick in Driftwood. They'd buy a keg for the ride there and back. Maybe they did something similar for the Tumbleweed back in the day?

[Raining Inside]

Wow, cool to know. I moved to Austin in '89, so it must have already been gone. Then the bus in the picture might be a charter or tour bus? I remember UT clubs would charter buses for a trip out to the Salt Lick in Driftwood. They'd buy a keg for the ride there and back. Maybe they did something similar for the Tumbleweed back in the day?

It was probably a charter bus. The place was pretty popular and had a stage for live music. Back then it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere though.

[photoLith]

Thats simply amazing seeing skyline shots of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin from back then. Its amazing to see the changes in their skylines! Incredible thread.

[photoLith]

Great stuff again man!

I know we have some Austinites who have shots from this angle in the present day. I'd love to see the comparison between then and now:

http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810602-04.jpg

Ive got one from that vantage point that I took last Christmas.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4210239414_f6756c66eb_o.jpg

[Rail Claimore]

Great thread!

Though I think that pic of Fort Worth you posted is actually Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository.

http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810601-01.jpg

I also love this shot from above the Dan Ryan. It's amazing how there weren't many buildings close to the height of the big 3 as recently as the 1980's. Sears, Hancock, and Big Stan (or was it Amoco) really stood out.

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[Raining Inside]

Though I think that pic of Fort Worth you posted is actually Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository.

http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810601-01.jpg

Yeah, that's Dealey Plaza. The other side of that wooden fence is the infamous grassy knoll.

[KevinFromTexas]

Great thread, Rob. I definitely remember this thread. Austin saw really bad flooding that month. 11 people drowned.

[mthq]

Ive got one from that vantage point that I took last Christmas.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4210239414_f6756c66eb_o.jpg

:worship: NICE!!

[arbeiter]

Yeah, it's "Tumbleweed Hill" on 2222. I don't remember ever going to the Texas Tumbleweed restaurant, but the sign to the place was there until the early 2000's at least, although I think it shut down in the late 1980's. The area is still not redeveloped fully (despite being a very attractive location scenery-wise and locationwise), but part of it is now called "Ribelin Ranch".

[mobyhead]

You never cease to amaze me Mr. Pence. Are you the skinny guy in the beginning of the thread? (excuse my ignorance)

[TXLove]

Amazing thread! So cool to see all the changes in the past 30 years!!!

[Nightsky]

Wonderful! I really like the old cars in the pictures.

[Robert Pence]

Thanks LSyd & Rail Claimore for the correction on the purported "Dallas" photo. Twenty-four hours on a train, followed by thirty years, made me fuzzy on some of the details.

Thanks, everyone, for the comments. I'm glad folks are enjoying these.

Awesome stuff mate - thanks for sharing - it's really cool to see pics of such quality from the past :)

I'm guessing you carried many rolls of film with you :)
Thanks. Kodachrome, four rolls @ 20 exposures each, 1 roll @ 36 exposures. Nowadays with digital, I just blaze away with abandon; I probably would have shot that much just in the city, if I were doing it now. Then, every click of the shutter cost money.

You never cease to amaze me Mr. Pence. Are you the skinny guy in the beginning of the thread? (excuse my ignorance)
Yep, that's me. I'm skinnier now than I was then, only I don't have all that hair. :)

You probably wouldn't remember, but were the massive cement factories along the line between Austin and San Antonio built yet in 1981?(they look somewhat modern compared to most big industrial plants you see). Maybe that's what was holding up your train, I see hoppers filled with gravel. Living in San Marcos that's what comes through town day and night.

I didn't get south of Austin on that trip, so I don't know about the cement plants along the line. There was this small one on the west side of the tracks as they approached the station in Austin, just south of the bridge. I'm not sure what it was, but it looks like it might have been a ready-mix plant.
http://robertpence.com/tx_austin/810602-17.jpg

[jtk1519]

Dallas is almost unrecognizable without Fountain Place, BoA Plaza, etc.

[Onn]

Ha, the Amtrack Superliners still look like that...well at least one did as late as 2004, when I look a trip out west. Last time I took Superliner in 2008 the cars upholstery was all blue, but many of the fixtures existed from the originals. I highly recommend taking a trip on one if anyone here hasn't, the scenery is mind-blowing any direction you go.

Awesome set, love the Dallas pics! I miss the 80s (even though I wasn't born in them), it was a simpler time in America. :)