CARNAHAN TO EMBARK UPON WHISTLE-STOP RAILROAD TOUR OF MISSOURI

Gov. Mel Carnahan plans to ride the rails next week, launching a 22-city, four-day whistle-stop tour of Missouri designed to remind voters of President Harry Truman's 1948 re-election campaign by train.

Carnahan, a Democrat, hopes to make tracks in his U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Sen. John Ashcroft.

The train trip will begin Wednesday at Union Station in St. Louis. The trip will conclude on July 22 with stops in Crystal City, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, Portageville and Hayti. The train, featuring eight passenger cars and three locomotives, will then return to St. Louis the same day.

Carnahan plans to address supporters from a platform on the back of the chartered train. Times for the stops aren't finalized.

Friends, family and fellow Democratic politicians are expected to go along on the ride.

The train party will vary along the route, with members boarding and exiting at various points. At any one time, several dozen people will be on board.

Besides the Southeast Missouri cities, stops are planned in St. Louis, Elsberry, Louisiana, Hannibal, Moberly, Salisbury, Henrietta, Independence, Harrisonville, Nevada, Joplin, Aurora, Springfield, Lebanon, Rolla and Sullivan.

Cape Girardeau residents saw another politician make tracks 48 years ago. Richard Nixon made a whistle stop on Oct. 21, 1952, as the vice presidential running mate of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. A crowd of about 1,000 greeted the 13-car campaign train at the Frisco passenger station in downtown Cape Girardeau. Nixon's political express also made stops in Ste. Genevieve and McBride.

Passenger trains once were common in Cape Girardeau. But over 60 years of passenger service in and out of Cape Girardeau ended on Sept. 17, 1965.

The "Carnahan Express" is keeping to its own schedule. The 980-mile, meandering route will take the governor and his party over Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks and those of other railroads. In Southeast Missouri the route is over BNSF tracks.

The train won't interfere with freight service, said BNSF spokesman Steve Forsberg.

Forsberg said the nation's second largest railroad routinely routes excursion and Amtrak trains over its tracks.

"This one will get some special handling," he said. "In this case, we will give this train a little higher priority because of the scheduled speeches that are occurring," said Forsberg, who works out of the railroad's offices in Kansas City, Kan.

The railroad's crews will operate the chartered train over its tracks. There will be a number of two-man crews used. Each crew consists of an engineer and a conductor.

Like freight trains, the Carnahan train will be monitored from the railroad's computerized, operations center in Fort Worth, Texas.

The control room is the size of a football field. "You could fit NASA's control center in it several times," said Forsberg. The operations center is 2 1/2 stories tall. In addition to individual computer terminals, the operations center has giant video screens that stretch 218 feet on one curved wall.

Passenger trains get the highest priority on the system, he said.

But the campaign train will be little more than a blip on the tracks.

"We are operating, on average, 1,300 freight trains a day over 33,000 route miles of track in 28 states and two Canadian provinces. Handling one small train in Southeast Missouri isn't a big deal," he said.