Day 12: San Antonio to Houston

The Sunset Limited stopped at the San Antonio station about 5:30 a.m. and headed to Houston after several cars were switched to a train headed to Dallas and Chicago. The landscape was much more green and lush than yesterday, but unremarkable. The train went straight through the center of many small towns, with a Main Street with Nineteenth Century store facades facing us on one side and another road with modest one-story wood frame houses with front porches facing us on the other.

After about four hours, we reached the sprawling Houston metro area, with gleaming downtown towers rising above the freeways and gritty outlying neighborhoods.

The Houston railroad station must be the most mediocre major city railroad station in the country, a small, plain one-story 1959 cinder block building distant from downtown, baking in the sun next to a freeway overpass.

Amtrak locomotive and
Southern Pacific steam locomotive,
San Antonio

Home near Columbus, Texas,
between San Antonio and Houston

Houston skyline

The incredibly mediocre
Houston railroad station