The Texas Eagle began on August 15, 1948, with the renaming of the Sunshine Special. For thirteen years, the Texas Eagle operated as two separate sections, leaving St. Louis in the late afternoon, one following behind the other at an approximately 10-minute interval. At Longview, the routes diverged. The west Texas section continued to Dallas and El Paso, while the south Texas section split off cars for Houston and Galveston at Palestine, then operated to Austin and San Antonio. In 1952, dome cars were added to the train. After 1961, the Texas Eagle was consolidated as a single, very long train, between St. Louis and Longview, Texas, where the train was split into several sections, each serving different Texas cities. The west Texas section of the Texas Eagle continued from Longview to Dallas, Fort Worth, and El Paso; the south Texas section served Palestine, Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo. A third section of the Texas Eagle split from the main train at Palestine, providing service to Houston. While at its northern end, the Texas Eagle served St. Louis, as noted above, it also had another section that split off at Little Rock, going east towards Memphis. On December 12, 1948, a few months after its inception the Texas Eagle carried through sleepers from the Pennsylvania Railroad's Penn Texas, providing a one-seat ride from Washington, D.C. and New York City to Texas. Through sleeper service ended on June 30, 1961, but it was still possible to make a connection between the two trains in St. Louis. The western section ended May 31, 1969, leaving a San Antonio-St. Louis service. The Missouri Pacific discontinued the remaining Texas intrastate segment of the Texas Eagle on September 22, 1970. The Missouri Pacific bypassed the Interstate Commerce Commission by arguing that the "Texas Eagle" was not an interstate train but rather three intrastate trains: one which ran San Antonio-Texarkana, another which ran from Texarkana to the Missouri border, and a third which ran from the Missouri border to St. Louis. The Texas Railroad Commission accepted this argument and permitted the Missouri Pacific to end the Texas portion of the Texas Eagle. The TexasRailroad Commission ruling was handed down less than a month before President Nixon signed Railpax legislation which placed a moratorium on passenger train discontinuances in anticipation of the start-up of Amtrak. The St. Louis-Texarkana truncation of the Texas Eagle continued running until the advent of Amtrak on May 1, 1971, when it was discontinued.
