Dick Gabrriel from Marietta, GA on 9/30/2008 7:45:21 PM:
We just rode the Katy a few weeks ago. The four (two each direction/day)St. Louis/Kansas City trains do not have the best on-time performance of Amtrak trains. Because of the flooding, we ended up using Amtrak on three occassions/days, and all three trains were less than 30 min. late. You can check on-time performance for recent periods--the past five days. I just looked at train 311 and it ran 2 min. to 24 min. late for 9/25-30 period for Hermann, MO. The Amtrak folks on the train are very helpful and friendly--the conductor on our trains is a Katy biker himself.
As far a shuttle, I'm not sure about Kirkwood, but I used our hotel shuttle to take me to the airport, and then got the Metro which takes you to the center of downtown St. Louis. The new downtown transportation center is still under construction and Metro/buses/Amtrak will eventually be in one building, but currently the Amtrak terminal is about a 500 foot walk from the Metro terminal.