Taking the B&O to Texas By John Arledge

Bill Howes’s article in the October issue of News & Notes regarding the last trip on the B&O’s Capitol Limited brought back memories of some of the train trips I made in the early days of my career on the B&O.

I grew up in Texas; and in May, 1950, after graduation from high school, I came to Baltimore. In June, I obtained a position of Office Boy in the B&O’s Baltimore Regional Accounting Department.  Over the next few years, prior to getting married, I made several train trips back to Texas to visit relatives, primarily to Midland where I had last lived before coming to Baltimore.

As I recall, I was at first only entitled to a half-rate pass on passenger trains and, even after becoming eligible for a full rate pass, was restricted from the so-called “crack trains”. I rode coach at first; the B&O from Baltimore to St. Louis, and then on the Missouri Pacific and Texas & Pacific Railroads to Texas for what were normally two-day trips. For example, I could leave Camden Station in Baltimore around 5 PM on a Friday and not get to Midland, Texas, until around 4 PM Sunday. It was a long coach ride.

In January, 1957, after my marriage and a two-year stint in the Army during the Korean War, I obtained an officer’s position in the B&O’s Labor Relations Department in Baltimore. Thereafter, my positions entitled me to a full rate pass on all trains and Pullman cars. I could also ride on locomotives.

Around that time, for trips between Washington and Fort Worth, the B&O and the Missouri Pacific had entered into an arrangement whereby a bedroom car was placed on the B&O’s National Limited in Washington and was transferred to the Missouri Pacific’s Texas Eagle at St. Louis. You could get on a National Limited coach around 5 PM at Camden Station in Baltimore and, on arrival in Washington, transfer to the Missouri Pacific bedroom car.  The National Limited arrived in St. Louis around 1 PM the following day. The Texas Eagles left St. Louis about 5 PM so, upon arrival there, you could get off the bedroom car, walk around downtown St. Louis, get something to eat and, when you returned  to the railroad station, get back on the bedroom car which was now on the Missouri Pacific’s Texas Eagle bound for Texas. You could stay on the bedroom car until arrival in Fort Worth the following morning. The car was taken off at Fort Worth and you could move into a coach for the trip on to Midland, for example. On the return trip, the bedroom car was put on at Fort Worth and switched out in Washington. I had relatives in Fort Worth; and when my wife and I made these trips, they would come down to the train station to visit for the one hour it normally took to complete the switching out of the bedroom car. My wife and I made many trips to Texas under this arrangement in what we thought was the height of luxury.