While I'm 100% in support of a train to Tulsa, reasonable trip times may end up being a big hurdle to success. The Stillwater Central Railroad owns and operates this line, known as the Sooner Subdivision, and currently maintains the line to FRA Class III conditions - allowing a maximum permissible speed of 60mph for passenger trains. Only about 120 track miles separate downtown Tulsa from downtown OKC, however the Sooner Sub contains quite a few curves that require trains to slow down so they can't operate at maximum speed across the majority of the route - unlike BNSF's Red Rock Subdivision line that the
Heartland Flyer uses to get to Fort Worth.
In 1959, predecessor railroad St. Louis–San Francisco Railway - a.k.a. the Frisco - operated two trains over this route: the Will Rogers (which made regular stops in Tulsa, Sapulpa, Bristow, Chandler, and OKC, with additional intermediate whistle stops on request only) and the Meteor (which was an express train with whistle stops only in Sapulpa, Bristow, and Chandler). The Will Rogers was scheduled to take 3 hours to complete the trip from downtown to downtown, and the Meteor only saved 10 minutes off that according to
this old Frisco timetable (see "Table 6" on page 10 of that PDF) - making for an average speed of between 40-45mph.
Testing with modern equipment would be needed to see what trip times would actually look like under today's conditions... but based on what I've found, I think it's likely that the route would require expensive upgrades to track condition and straightening to bypass slow curves in order to cut trip times down. Maybe a real railroader like Mott has some real insight on what this line would need to make sure one-way trips aren't 3 hours. I mean, I personally am still willing to ride a 3 hour train to Tulsa, but I am fairly sure I'm in the minority there - I agree with you that it probably needs to be in the neighborhood of 2 hours to be a real success.
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