History
The original Texas Chief was inaugurated as a coach and Pullman train on April 3, 1948.
At Amtrak's inception, the Texas Chief operated Chicago-Houston. It inherited the Hi-level (bilevel) chair cars from the former San Francisco Chief, which had been discontinued at that same time. The train operated separately from the Super Chief (renamed the Southwest Limited in 1974 and now known as the Southwest Chief) along their shared route from Chicago to Newton, Kansas.
A number of colleges and universities along the route—including the University of Kansas, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Wichita State University, University of Oklahoma -- provided students looking for economical transportation.
Due to cuts ordered by the US Department of Transportation, Amtrak's Lone Star was discontinued on October 8, 1979. At the time of its discontinuance, the train was ranked as Amtrak's 7th most popular long-distance train.
Chicago-Houston service continued in the form of a section of the Chicago-Laredo Inter-American that split from the train in Temple, Texas. This left Oklahoma without passenger rail service until 1999.
Read more about this topic: Lone Star (Amtrak Train)
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“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)