Gainesville-to-Texas passenger train service?

ATLANTA - You may soon be able to ride the Amtrak Crescent from Gainesville to parts of Texas.

Texas wants a piece of the Crescent, according to the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers (GARP).

GARP says the proposal calls for splitting the New York-to-New Orleans line Mississippi, with one section continuing to New Orleans and the other heading west of Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Crescent currently operates from New York to New Orleans, with stops in Georgia in Toccoa, Gainesville and Atlanta. But, according GARP, for many years now, there's been talk about splitting the train into two sections in Meridian, Miss., with one of those sections continuing on to New Orleans as it does now, and the other section heading west, to Dallas-Ft. Worth.

The proposal came close to becoming reality several years ago, according to the report, as part of an ambitious Amtrak route-expansion plan. Amtrak even chose a name for the run: the Crescent Star, but that's just about as far as things got.

GARP says the expansion plan collapsed during Amtrak's 2002 funding crisis, but now that the financial situation seems to have stabilized, Crescent Star talk is starting all over again. Meeting in Galveston last month, the Texas Association of Railroad Passengers passed a resolution identifying a Dallas-Ft. Worth extension of the Crescent as one of its priorities.

GARP says an added bonus to adding Texas to the Crescent's destinations would be a same-day connection in Ft. Worth to the Texas Eagle, making it much easier to travel between Atlanta and the West Coast.