I began making frequent trips out to La Plata starting in early 2011, when Bob and Amy Cox agreed to have three of my railroad photographs on display at the APRHF Silver Rails Gallery. I also met my future wife Kandace that year; and, as we began planning out our wedding for 2012, we decided to hire Bob and Amy Cox to be our wedding photographers.  Of course, this meant even more trips out to La Plata in order to work out the details of what would be taking place at our ceremony and reception.  With the frequent trips between Chicago and La Plata, we became more interested in some of the sites we saw along the train route of the Southwest Chief. We learned from some of the conductors that during the winter months you can often spot eagles and their nests from the train between Lomax and Dallas City, Illinois along the Mississippi River. Another passenger, who happened to be a history professor at the University of Illinois, pointed out a large hill between Mendota and Princeton, Illinois that was once part of a coal mine disaster in 1909 that killed more than 250 miners; you could also see this from the train. This started to put the idea in our head that the Southwest Chief might be a good candidate to establish a new Trails & Rails program on; there was a lot more stories out there than just the corn and soybeans most people associate with this area. Unfortunately, the way the schedules are written, Chicago-based guides could not go beyond Galesburg, Illinois without needing lodging somewhere; the very issue that had prevented a long-distance Trails & Rails program from operating out of Chicago during the 2011 and 2012 seasons. The thought of guides somehow being able to stay at the Depot Inn & Suites was always in the back of our minds, as this railroad-themed inn in La Plata, Missouri, seemed like the perfect fit.

In an effort to gauge their interest levels, early in 2012, we conducted preliminary talks with all of the parties that would need to be involved in the creation of a Trails & Rails program between Chicago and La Plata, Missouri. When Amtrak, the National Park Service, the APRHF, and the owners of the Depot Inn & Suites seemed to be on board, we brought all the organizations together for formal negotiations. While there have been Trails & Rails guides on the route between La Junta, Colorado and Albuquerque, New Mexico, for many years, there was never been a program on the Southwest Chief through the Midwestern states.  APRHF officials saw that sponsoring a Trails & Rails program would be consistant with their non-for-profit mission of helping educate passengers about the landscape and passenger rail opportunities. A deal was struck on December 3, 2012, for one trial season of Trails & Rails to take place on the Southwest Chief from May to September 2013.

Normally, individual Trails & Rails programs are managed by a unit of the National Park Service and one of the park’s rangers serve as the Coordinator. The lack of National Park Service units between Chicago and La Plata, Missouri, presented a real challenge as to how the group would be administered. The only National Park Service unit along the train route from Chicago to La Plata is the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail, a 1,300-mile trail through several western states, which commemorates the trek of the Mormons in 1846 and 1847 between Nauvoo, Illinois and Salt Lake City, Utah. However, the closest National Park Service rangers who work for the Mormon Trail are located at an office and visitor center several hundred miles away from any point of the route of the Southwest Chief, making their oversight very difficult. It was decided that the founder of Trails & Rails/National Coordinator, James E. Miculka, would be in charge of the new group; he was generous enough to take on the responsibilities of managing things from his office at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.  Since Jim already had oversight duties of Trails & Rails on the national level, and even other duties at the university itself, he appointed us to serve as the program’s Chicago Coordinators. We oversee the day-to-day operations of our program on the eastern end of the route; APRHF President Bob Cox, serves as the La Plata Coordinator, and oversees operations on the western end of the 298-mile route. Our group’s connection to Texas A&M University’s Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences has allowed us to collaborate with instructor Susan Scott. Susan was instrumental in the development of the resource manual and educational training of the guides. She continues to be a consultant to our program.

Our Trails & Rails program was given only about six months to get fully organized, with the agreement being formed on December 3, 2012, and guides set to go out on the first trip on May 18, 2013. The first thing we did as Coordinators was put out an advertisement for Trails & Rails guides. Finding qualified guides can be a real challenge for some programs, especially those who are based in smaller towns across the country. Luckily, in such a large city as Chicago, we were able to have a large pool of applicants to choose from. Over the course of two weeks, we ended up interviewing more than 60 applicants at Chicago Union Station, then picking the 25 who we thought were most qualified to participate in the first season. From there, we spent four weekends in a row driving the entire train route between Chicago and La Plata, stopping off in small towns and historical societies along the way to get material and stories for the reference manual we would have to put together. While driving the route in the Chicago suburbs and eastern Illinois can be easy because of many paved roads that parallel the tracks, it can be quite the challenge in southeast Iowa and northeast Missouri, where most highways are gravel or dirt and don’t go along the tracks for long distances. We hope to write a separate Train Web article sometime in 2015 about some of the adventures we had during the drives to produce our Trails & Rails reference manual. So, stay tuned!