AMTRAK REVERTING TO SOUTHERN PACIFIC FORM.

When Amtrak rolled out the new coaching stock for the California corridor service, I introduced a Streetsblog review of the cars with "I'd roll them out shamefacedly too."  The reversion?

Time for a history lesson.  "And here the raison d'etre for Amtrak included discontent with automat cars on Southern Pacific (and some Burlington trains) and Buffeteria cars replacing the full dining cars on the Hiawatha." Until recently, there were those prepackaged meals for sleeper passengers on the Empire Builder and California Zephyr, there is no food service on the Milwaukee trains, even the morning and evening runs that once had a lunch-lounge car, so an automat car on Southern Pacific metals under Amtrak auspices, why not?

The railroads' cost-cutting measures led the Interstate Commerce Commission to mandate levels of service on long-distance trains, and those levels of service were in the initial Amtrak legislation, with surprisingly encouraging outcomes early on.  Later, well, ferroequinologists developed the E-T-T-S locution for a reason.

Southern Pacific's Automat cars were an attempt to reduce costs in the dining department.  They also had the effect of discouraging passengers by degrading the service.  The Interstate Commerce Commission and the railroad locked horns over whether the regulator had the authority to impose service standards.  That wrangle was mooted by the passage of legislation creating Amtrak, which included requirements for food service on overnight and longer-haul trains.  Food service, however, is satisfied by the provision of a single cafe car providing microwaved food with Gate Gourmet's indirect cost return included.  Substituting better pastries, or adding espresso, might heighten the appeal of Acela first class service.

The food service and business class cars have arrived in the Midwest, and Trains passenger train correspondent Bob Johnston offers his impressions.

Divisions of Illinois and California transportation departments, not Amtrak, led and managed the procurement of single-level Venture cars and Charger locomotives. Though they agreed on aisle width and the same type of coach seat, the two agencies arrived at different ideas of how their respective rolling stock was to be configured. The Midwest cafes went through a variety of changes from what was initially envisioned as a standardized design; California opted for vending-machine cars that still have not debuted on the San Joaquins.

The coach-café extends an idea from the Acela trains, in which there is a counter staffed by an attendant, but little nearby seating, and passengers eat at their seats.  The article notes there is little maneuvering room, should a passenger cross the aisle to the condiment bar to put that green relish on his hot dog and then make his way back to his seat.

On this trip, the overhead passenger information display system and automated announcements weren’t operational. Following the obligatory safety and no-smoking advisories after an on-time departure, a conductor added, “We have a new café car; it’s at the front of the train. There are no seats to eat your food. If you make a purchase, you must take the food back to your seat.”

Walking forward as No. 305 speeds at 79 mph in the driving rain between the Summit and Joliet stops, only a smattering of single seats remain unoccupied. This includes the café car’s coach section, which has six rows of double seats on one side of the wide aisle and eight rows on the other. The section is roughly comparable in size to the business-class section of Amfleet I and Horizon cafe cars, but Illinois opted to increase business-class capacity by making that an entirely separate car.

With the people who appropriate the money for the trains in Springfield and the rent-seekers in Chicago, a full-length business car makes political sense.  Whether the service will ever require multiple business class cars in the manner of the old Yankee Clipper or Abraham Lincoln remains to be seen.

The intended design of the train sets, with a coach-café operating as a married pair with a business class car, is a nod to the traditional arrangement of cars in a train.

The all-Venture, five-car train waiting on Chicago Union Station’s track 18 on a stormy July 9 had its coach-café immediately behind the locomotive, followed by three coaches and a business-class car on the rear. The original plan was to run the coach-café and business-class cars together, since business-class passengers get a free non-alcoholic beverage on Midwest trains. Another reason the two cars were to be paired is that the business-class car, with one seat on one side of the aisle and two on the other, has a built-in wheelchair lift for passengers with disabilities.

That's not how Illinois officials want their trains run.

Illinois DOT spokesman Scott Speegle tells News Wire, “While final consist decisions are made by Amtrak, we have requested that the business class car is at one end of the consist to give those customers greater privacy. Ideally, we would like the café car placed in the middle of the consist to give all customers easier access to the cafe.” He says that as the Venture coach-cafés receive final acceptance by the agency and Amtrak, they will first fill out the Lincoln Service lineup of four round trips before being deployed to other Midwest routes.

On the train Mr Johnston rode, the coach-café was on the head pin, followed by three coaches and the business class car.  The traditional configuration of a train would put the coaches on the head pin, then the coach-café, with the business class car carrying the markers.  In that way, the business class passengers would have their privacy, albeit without a car host, they'd have to go forward to the coach-café to get their beverage.

Historically, the dining car separated coaches from first class, and a lounge car of some kind, if one was offered, would be between the coaches and the diner to allow coach passengers to chill until a table became available.

Perhaps, though, none of that matters now-a-days.

Of note, however, is that returning to Chicago from Bloomington-Normal the same evening at about 8:30 p.m. on Lincoln Service train No. 306, the train was also very crowded but virtually no one visited the Horizon café-business class car. This was despite the attendant regularly announcing that he was open and serving. Perhaps it was the late hour. Or just maybe, today’s Amtrak clientele are simply content to stay in their seats with their phones.

Sad. It's unlikely that you'll see the high-roller rent-seekers dealing a few hands of bridge or pinochle or poker in the club car any more.

PREFERRED BY MANY. To reach Springfield, I used the Amtrak Lincoln Service. It offers the same frequency of train service the GM&O offered in 1964, although with somewhat more convenient times and intervals.

Loadings were rather heavy in both directions.

Amtrak Lincoln Service 305, Wednesday, 12 March 2008. Genesis P42 diesel 24, Amclub-dinette 48169, Horizon short-distance coaches 54524-54531-54503. Temperature about 40 degrees, clear skies, dry rail. Leave Chicago 5.15:01, Summit 5.35:41-5.36:30, signal checks east of Joliet, Joliet 6.04:02-6.06:05, stop opposite Raceway Pizza west of Joliet 6.20:55-6.24:43, Dwight 6.54:39-6.55:15, Pontiac 7.10:33-7.11:12, meet 304 in siding west of Pontiac, Bloomington 7.37:00-7.41:33 (entire rear coach emptied at Bloomington), Lincoln 8.09:35-8.10:02, arrive Springfield 8.36:58. Train able to leave Springfield on time.

The GM&O advertised "preferred by most" as their direct Chicago to St. Louis line had competition from the Wabash to St. Louis and from the Illinois Central to Springfield. The Illinois Central sold their last ticket on the Governor's Special on April 30, 1971. The station has since been restored, including a new clock tower, as a visitor's center across the street from the Lincoln Presidential Library.


Most of the people on the platform were waiting for the train to Chicago, although some were awaiting the Texas train that was due shortly. The station is close enough to the capitol for the agents of influence to book a business class seat and walk over.


Amtrak Lincoln Service 304, Thursday 13 March 2008. Genesis diesels 62-36, Amclub-dinette 48185, Horizon short-distance coaches 54518-54512-54510. Temperature about 50 degrees, overcast skies, dry rail. Leave Springfield 5.31:20, meet 321 in siding east of Springfield, Lincoln 5.58:52-5.59:44, Bloomington 6.28:05-6.31:13, a few Illinois State spring breakers getting an early start, Pontiac 6.57:20-6.57:55, meet 305 in siding east of Pontiac, restrictive signals west of Dwight, Dwight 7.13:36-7.14:42, Joliet 7.54:04-7.55:44, Summit 8.22:44-8.23:35, arrive Chicago Track 24 8.52:08.

At Chicago, Hiawatha 342 turned up on time at 9.00, a little unusual for a train that regularly turns in an 85 minute performance. The crew might have had occasion to handle the train a bit less aggressively. In the rake is the Wheel of Fortune car, advertising National Train Day. May 10.


On the markers, two of the Charter Wire private cars.

POINTLESS ARROW APRIL FOOLS.

To really foul things up requires a computer.  A week ago Friday midwestern trains weren't rolling.

In Michigan, two westbound morning trains operated into Chicago with minimal delays, but westbound Wolverine No. 353 and eastbound train No. 350 were stopped on either side of Battle Creek, Mich., for an extended period. This is where Canadian National controls about a mile of track over which the Amtrak trains operate. As a result, eastbound afternoon no. 352 and evening westbound no. 355 have been cancelled.

Two Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha midday round trips have also been annulled, as was the morning Chicago-Quincy, Ill., eastbound Illinois Zephyr and westbound Carl Sandburg.

There was something wrong with the master controller for positive train control on Amtrak, and things didn't get any better during the weekend.

Ongoing issues with the server involved with Amtrak’s positive train control system have led to the cancellation today (Saturday, March 25), of a number of trains in the Midwest and elsewhere.

According to the Amtrak Alerts Twitter feed, 11 of the 13 Hiawatha service trains between Chicago and Milwaukee have been canceled as of 9:41 a.m. CDT. Still slated to run as of this writing are northbound No. 333 (an 11:05 a.m. departure) and southbound No. 336 (leaving at 1:05 p.m.)

Also cancelled in the Midwest are Lincoln Service train No. 301, the 7:15 a.m. departure from Chicago to St. Louis, which was originally reported as being delayed because of equipment problems; St. Louis-Chicago Lincoln Service trains Nos. 300 (a 4:30 a.m. departure) and 302 (a 6:40 a.m. departure); and Wolverines Nos. 350, the 6:45 a.m. departure from Chicago to Pontiac, Mich., and 351, the 5:43 a.m. departure from Pontiac to Chicago.

Long-distance cancellations include today’s departure of the northbound Texas Eagle from San Antonio, and the westbound Sunset Limited from New Orleans. Trains that were scheduled to depart Friday that were eventually cancelled included the westbound Sunset Limited; the westbound Empire Builder, and the southbound Texas Eagle, which was slated to leave Chicago at 1:45 p.m., and was cancelled about 7:45 p.m., although that cancellation was not reported on Amtrak Alerts until 1:01 a.m.

On the Sunday, it might have been easier for Amtrak to post a list of the trains that were actually running, as almost everything was out of position or could not be run because the master controller still didn't initialize.  Chicago to the East Coast?  Fuhgeddaboudit!

And after the master controller came back on line, trains that were listed as available ... weren't.

Amtrak departures from Chicago began at mid-morning today (Sunday, March 26) following two days of widespread cancellations because engineers couldn’t register, or initialize, trains in the interoperable positive train control system shared with host railroads.

The impact of those cancellations will reverberate for days because equipment isn’t available to return to Chicago. Today’s westbound Cardinal, Lake Shore Limited, and Capitol Limited from the East Coast, northbound City of New Orleans, and eastbound Empire Builder were all canceled. Also not running will be Monday’s eastbound Builder, Southwest Chief, and northbound Texas Eagle and the eastbound California Zephyr departing Emeryville, Calif., on Tuesday.

It got worse.

Initialization was able to take place intermittently outside of Chicago because there was less data flowing into the interoperable PTC network at other locations. Though not yet confirmed by Amtrak, it appears the company did not proactively cancel trains in the hope that the server issue was close to being solved.

When that didn’t happen, passengers who had been told earlier Saturday that their train would depart suddenly became stranded at Chicago Union Station."

Why, it's as if Dementia Joes brain activity had been loaded into that server.  The incompetence that we see in the most diverse Cabinet of this century appears to be characteristic of the middle management of the government agencies as well.

THE RAIL PROFESSIONALS TAKE UP THE CAUSE.

Trains stringer Brian Schmidt has a few days to explore the corridor services radiating from Chicago, discovers he doesn't have enough days.

There are still four corridors and a few other routes out of Chicago I've never seen. But, unfortunately, lack of foresight and planning on behalf of the states supporting the corridors conspires to make them pretty much useless as connecting services.

Yes. When the additional frequencies rolled out in the fall of 2006, I noted,

The additional frequencies are encouraging, although I hope the Amtrak and Illinois DofT performance reviews consider the potential for connectivity. The geography of Illinois makes some connections impractical via Chicago (e.g. Urbana-Bloomington or Carbondale-St. Louis) but there might be some value in having good connections such as Milwaukee-Bloomington or Kalamazoo-Macomb or Ann Arbor-Urbana or Lansing-Springfield. Here, there are a few niggling details.

Mr Schmidt quickly discovers the details are more than niggling.

The first southbound Hiawatha departs Milwaukee a 6:15 a.m. and arrives in Chicago at 7:57 a.m. That's a much easier train trip to the Windy City than I ever had out of Toledo. (And six days a week, there are seven round trips!)

My first thought was to go to St. Louis, ride some light rail, see the Gateway Arch, and come home on Sunday. The southbound trip works out great. The first Lincoln Service departure from Chicago is at 9:25 a.m., a reasonable 1.5-hour layover from my inbound Hiawatha. The return trip, however is the weak link here.

The last northbound Hiawatha departs Chicago at 8:05 p.m. The 3 p.m. Lincoln Service departure from St. Louis arrives in Chicago at 8:40 p.m. Close, but no connection. The next previous departure? The Texas Eagle at 7:55 a.m., which gets me back to Chicago at 1:52 p.m. (in theory). And the two morning Lincoln Service departures leave St. Louis at 4:35 and 6:40 a.m.

So my "weekend" in St. Louis turned into a 3 p.m. arrival and an early morning departure from the hotel the next morning.

Because the Illinois Department of Transportation underwrites those trains, their schedules have Illinois State students and Springfield politicians and shoppers headed for the Mag Mile in mind.  In the very early days of Amtrak, his overnight in St. Louis would have been feasible, with the early morning departure from Milwaukee on the Prairie State, and a return on the afternoon Prairie State that got away from Chicago at 10.30 for a midnight arrival in Milwaukee.  A St. Louisan out for a weekend in Milwaukee would use the Abraham Lincoln.  Cardinal fans headed to Milwaukee can manage with the existing schedules, although some of those have inordinately long layovers in Chicago.  "Hiawatha 332 arrives Chicago four minutes after 303 leaves."

HERE WE GO AGAIN.

Two weeks ago, as the polar vortex January winter did what it did, we noted, "Amtrak, which did not cover itself with glory a year ago, is cancelling trains even before the storm: how is it that weather forecasters can anticipate storm arrivals more precisely than Amtrak?"

THE BEGINNING OF THE RAINBOW ERA.

The Amtrak timetable that took effect November 14, 1971, was the first effort by the carrier to put its own image into place.  There were two earlier timetables, a very rare May 1, 1971 edition, and a somewhat more readily obtained July 15 version.  Both were produced by the National Railway Publishing Company, producer of The Official Guide of the Railways, and they had that Official Guide look to them.  Many of the contracting railroads published timetables for their services.  In the case of Seaboard Coast Line, only a disclaimer "Operated for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation" recognized that there was a new operator of the trains.

That November 14 timetable began with the "Northeast Quick Reference Schedules" in a read-across format typical of airline schedules of the era.  Then came the "National Quick Reference Schedules" in the airline format, with the city where a change of train took place.  At the time, the carrier only listed same-day connections, thus Pittsburgh to Seattle or Los Angeles to Miami were not options.  (Only later did Amtrak make a virtue out of necessity and suggest that cross-country travelers take a day to explore Chicago or Kansas City or New Orleans.) The standard read down - read up timetables were still present, relegated to the rear of the timetable.

At trackside, a few changes were also visible.  November 26 was a Friday, and forty years ago it wasn't as big a deal for Christmas shopping, not that I had a lot of money for shopping in those days anyway.  Bus fare to the Milwaukee Union Station (still known in that way in 1971, although the last North Western train called on April 30 of that year, about the same time the Bucks won their only basketball title) and some Kodachrome I did have.

Union Pacific coaches did make appearances in Milwaukee before Amtrak, part of the mileage equalization agreement among the operators of the City trains.  Southern Pacific cars, because of the City of San Francisco, would occasionally turn up.  A coach yard full of Union Pacific was uncommon.

The first train north from Chicago is un-named 321 (the systemwide renumbering of trains also began on November 14), off Chicago at 9.15 and arriving Milwaukee at 10.45, making intermediate stops at Glenview and Sturtevant.   Sturtevant became an Amtrak stop in the summer, to provide Racine passengers who used to use the North Western with a rail option.  Chicago travelers today have two earlier departures, at 6 am except Sunday and 8.25 am daily, and an 89 minute timing inclusive of four stops.  (Regular readers know that 89 minute timing is often 84 minutes in practice.)  Those trains have no food service, although the 10.20 departure has "at-seat cart service" of bag snacks and canned pop.  The airline-style service code for 321 is Y * meaning "Snack or light meal and beverage service" and "First-class service available."  Behind the diesels is today's first-class service: a Burlington dome-parlor built for the Kansas City Zephyr.  Today's business class: a pale shadow of what first class day accommodation used to be.

Note at left that the Pritzlaff warehouse, which had those nifty orange water towers with smiley faces, is still receiving rail shipments.

The next scheduled train is Eight, the Empire Builder, off Minneapolis at 6.30 and stopping only at La Crosse for a crew change and a 9.05 departure, and due Milwaukee at 12.15.  I didn't keep real careful notes in those days, and can't tell you whether this train was on time, but do recall that it was close to time.  (Minnesota high speed rail advocates note: two hours thirty minutes Minneapolis to LaCrosse on a seventy mph railroad, which is what it was on those days, and what much of it still is account the curves along the river.)

It's a raw day, with rain sometimes wanting to come down as snow, and the prow of that Great Northern F unit tells of wintry conditions to the northwest.  The Builder still looked very much like a Burlington Northern train, although a California Zephyr dome-lounge that included a shower-equipped master room provided a surprise ending.  It is behind a Union Pacific sleeper.

Next in, the Hiawatha, on an 89 minute timing because a proper noon train departs at 12.01.  It's running about an hour ahead of the old Afternoon Hiawatha schedule, while making most of the Morning Hiawatha's stops.  It connects with the bus to Madison at Columbus, but there is no stop at New Lisbon to connect for Wausau.

Milwaukee Road power, Northern Pacific coaches, Great Northern dome.  Gulf Mobile and Ohio parlor Bloomington on the rear?

That's a Burlington Northern diner between the coaches and first class.  In the timetable the service code is X *, where the X means "Food service (sit-down) and beverage service."  Amtrak exists in part because of Interstate Commerce Commission standards for on-train service.  Had the railroads managed to get rid of all the dining cars, some rail pundits of the era suggested there would be no Amtrak.  To a passenger purchasing a parlor car seat, it's probably more important that the seat be there than that it be in a rebuilt heavyweight ark of a car.

The next eastbound is a tribute to the clout of Montana Senator Mike Mansfield.  It's Friday, and the tri-weekly North Coast Hiawatha (the Hiawatha operates on days the North Coast doesn't) has come from Seattle along the old Northern Pacific route through the southern (more thickly settled) counties of Montana and North Dakota.  It's also close to time, scheduled out of Minneapolis at 8 am, due into Milwaukee at 2.10 pm after doing the local work along the Mississippi and across Wisconsin.  The concentration of all service onto one route undid the comprehensive all-day service between Chicago and the Cities that the Burlington, North Western, and Milwaukee once offered. It proved easier for Amtrak and The Milwaukee Road to use the time slots of the Hiawathas so as to reduce disruption of the freight service.  Westbound, the Empire Builder starts three hours behind the Hiawatha and gets to Minneapolis two hours thirty minutes later.  It reaches Milwaukee after dark this time of year.

Milwaukee Road diesels, again, that evidence of snow to the northwest, looks like Burlington Northern coaches.  The tail car is another California Zephyr dome-lounge-observation.

Those Nystrom 1948 Hiawatha coaches at right hung around on the Milwaukee corridor for a long time, first as leased extra capacity, later as additional purchases by Amtrak.  During the summer, Amtrak would take two sets of four coaches and a buffeteria and run a ten car relief to the Builder between Chicago and the Cities on busy days.  Put a Super Dome and a Skytop Lounge on and you'd have a proper train.

The last trains before the light went away were the two Abraham Lincoln trains.

The train to St. Louis left first, at 3.15.  Milwaukee Road power, still clean, and the consist that came in on 321 in the morning had the parlor-observation properly placed for the run to St. Louis.

The train from St. Louis was a few minutes late, but beat the twilight.

I was out of position for the engines, but got the tail end, including what looks like a Southern Pacific diner and another Kansas City Zephyr dome-parlor, thus the carrier made good on the X * service promised in the timetable.

(Cross-posted to European Tribune.)

LET'S GET THE SERVICE RIGHT.

Disaffected ferroequinologist Randal O'Toole directs his scorn at the proposed Front Range Passenger Rail service, at this time intended to link Cheyenne, Denver, and Pueblo by way of several college towns.

The Denver Post, which was a major cheerleader for Denver’s $4.9 billion FasTracks plan until it became the $7.9 billion FasTracks plan, by which time it was too late, is now a major cheerleader for the Front Range passenger train plan. It claims that an Amtrak train between Chicago and Milwaukee “shows what it could be.” Yes, because Fort Collins (population: 170,000) and Pueblo (population: 112,000) are just like Milwaukee (population: 577,000), and Denver (population: 715,000) is just like Chicago (population: 2.75 million).

Mr O'Toole did not provide a link to that Post article. Here it is.  The challenge is coming up with the right kind of project and the proper use of the freight tracks the trains will use.

The possibility of a similar arrangement between Colorado and Amtrak means that for all the costs and hurdles facing the creation of a Front Range rail line — and there are many — it’s closer to reality than it might appear.

For one thing, a heavily favored 191-mile corridor between Pueblo and Fort Collins mostly would follow existing freight-rail tracks. Even with modifications needed to support passenger trains, starting up a line likely would cost a fraction of the eye-popping $10.7 billion price tag estimated by a state report earlier this year.

That estimate was for a full build-out of dedicated double-track for the entire length — a long-term, gold-standard scenario that by 2045 would allow for two dozen roundtrips each weekday serving an estimated 6,900 riders.

Building the project by increments makes sense. Amtrak's Hiawatha service started with three trips each way, and a full day in Milwaukee was not possible.  It had a two-track railroad in pretty good shape to start with, and that railroad got some improvements for faster intermodal trains.  The augmented service of today, with the Milwaukee airport stop, came later.

When Lily Trienens boarded a train in downtown Milwaukee that would take her more than 70 miles to visit family in the north Chicago suburbs, she got a glimpse of the possible future of rail travel back home in Colorado.

The 35-year-old Lyons resident had flown to Wisconsin’s most populous city for a quick business trip. Looking for an easy option to make the trek south, she found it for $24 — an hourlong journey on Amtrak’s Hiawatha train that deposited her at a station in Glenview, Illinois, close enough to be picked up.

“It’s worked out perfectly,” she said on a recent Thursday morning as the crop fields and barns outside her window in Wisconsin and northern Illinois gave way to Chicago’s sprawling suburban landscape. “It’s been so convenient. It’s been really easy. It’s affordable. It’s fast.”

In the early days of Hiawathas calling at the airport, that service came as a pleasant surprise to northern Illinois residents whose planes sometimes had to divert to Milwaukee.  Denver Post readers get a favorable review of the existing service.

As Colorado looks elsewhere for inspiration, the 86-mile Hiawatha line stands out as a well-established yardstick.

It costs $25 for the full trip from downtown Milwaukee’s Intermodal Station to Union Station in Chicago, a journey that includes three brief stops in between and takes just under 90 minutes — often faster than driving. Wireless internet is available and electrical outlets are at each seat. In Wisconsin, Amtrak Thruway-branded buses have connected several other cities to the Milwaukee station for two years.

The Hiawatha can reach speeds up to 79 mph in some sections, helping it to grow into Amtrak’s highest-ridership Midwest train prior to the pandemic, carrying nearly 880,000 riders in 2019. Its recent on-time rating was 95%, according to Amtrak data.

Ridership has been recovering gradually since pandemic service cuts were reversed in May, though the early August trains still included three passenger cars instead of the usual six.

As a train pulled out of Union Station just after 5 p.m. on a recent weekday, workers who commute from Wisconsin to downtown Chicago opened their laptops. Other riders sat with shopping bags from downtown stores at their feet.

For the first 10 minutes, the three-year-old Siemens locomotive pulled three older Amtrak coach cars slowly past warehouses and redeveloping westside neighborhoods. Then it accelerated, a change noticed by a 5-year-old boy with curly blond hair as he looked out the window.

“The train’s going fast!” he said.

“We’re getting up to speed,” replied his mother, Amy Bell-Ferries.

Yes, the former Milwaukee Road trackage is posted for 79 mph north of Pacific Junction, but that's not what "really starting to move" used to mean. Never mind that: you build the service for the infrastructure you have, provide the extra frequencies, and only then start thinking about free rein to 125.  Get too eager to spend Federal money to build capacity for bullet trains in a relatively sparsely settled region, and you run into trouble.  Think about connecting Denver to the Southwest Chief route at Trindad, and then start thinking about something resembling a corridor service toward Lincoln and Omaha or extending toward Texas.  Otherwise you well might be creating a boondoggle.  Note in that High Speed Rail post discussing connectivity in the Front Range the example they cited.  "Planners should look at projects like Brightline Florida, which launched with hourly service. Frequent departures are important to making sure these projects are truly useful to passengers."  The service did not start with hourly trains, although as rider interest increased, so did frequencies.  In addition, Brightline's trains are diesel formations capable of free rein to 125 with proper signalling and grade crossing protection, meaning they don't require the really expensive tracks.

TO THE LAND OF LINCOLN. The Illinois Department of Transportation is requesting appropriations to upgrade the Chicago-St. Louis corridor with faster trains and a few more trips each day. Destination:Freedom quotes a charmingly misinformed Watertown, Wisconsin newspaper editorial seeking an extension of the Hiawatha service with through trains from Watertown to St. Louis. (At one time, the St. Louis-Chicago service was through-routed with trains turning in Milwaukee. Delays on the south end delayed the Chicago departures for Milwaukee, and Milwaukee commuters protested. Some years later, selected Hiawatha trains went as far as Watertown to relieve road congestion during an expressway repair. Those trains were not well-scheduled for west-suburban commuters, although a few schedules were convenient for family outings to eateries in Brookfield or Oconomowoc. Perhaps some stories of these trains another day.)

This month's trip report is an inspection of the service as far as Springfield before the 110 mph service and the added frequencies commence.


Apparently when the private-party season ends, the "Great Hall" in Chicago's Union Station reverts to a waiting room. Most commuters use the escalators directly opposite the commuter train concourses and miss the down-and-out catching naps on the benches.


This passage under Canal Street leads to the concourse, which, despite a remodeling to separate the commuter and long-distance concourses, is still cramped and subject to crowding, especially at holiday travel peaks.

The St. Louis corridor does not yet have the frequency or the precision of the Hiawatha service but the three-Horizon-one-Amclub (food service and coach on one end, custom class on the other) are well-loaded and the train crews cheerful. Cub fans are enroute to St. Louis for their dose of frustration. Union Pacific has moved most of its St. Louis-Chicago traffic to other routes. The only freight train interference is at crossings leading into the Grand Trunk and CSX yards. There's enough recovery margin that the train is on time into Lincoln and Springfield.


The locomotive is not as pretty as an E unit, the time signal no longer comes over the telegraph, and the watches themselves may receive a signal from the atomic clock, but conductor and stationmaster at Springfield still compare their watches.


The Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices downtown.



Across the street from Lincoln & Herndon is the old capitol building, flying a 36 star flag.


The current capitol building is a few blocks from the old downtown, on the other side of the Alton Union Pacific tracks. This is Illinois, so be impressed by the hill it sits on.


From the west, the cruciform building plan is evident. Illinois is a larger state than Wisconsin, with a legislature that trades in many more favors, but the capitol building itself is smaller than Wisconsin's. There appear to be fewer state office buildings in the immediate vicinity.


The whitetail deer is the Illinois state animal (what, not a polecat?) and this sculpture at the capitol visitors' center might include parts salvaged from cars rendered inoperable by collision with a deer.


Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Dana-Thomas house in the early 1900s. The copper guttering is pretty but appears to be a maintenance nightmare. Amtrak runs through the alley on the one jointed-rail track shown here. (At one time there were two tracks through this alley.)


President-elect Lincoln and family lived in this house until early 1861. The National Park Service conducts visitors through it. The nearby blocks are closed to automotive traffic with roads maintained in something resembling 1860 conditions.


The President-elect made his farewell speech from a train about to leave on what was then the Great Western Railroad (no Grange Hall here) for Washington, D.C. Norfolk Southern (ex-Wabash) trains now use the tracks.


The former Illinois Central station, which was in use until Amtrak Day, is having its clock tower restored as part of a conversion into a museum. This station is next to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

It was too nice a day for me to spend much time inside, but I did tour the museum.


Generals McClellan and Grant confer. (Yes, I at first wondered what General Sherman was doing there.)


And look who is lurking at the Executive Mansion.

The museum collection includes a number of broadsheets and cartoons critical of President Lincoln. The most venomous of the broadsheets make this article a masterwork of lucidity, and the cartoons render this tame.

It was time to go home, and the up Ann Rutledge was on time despite having to contend with Union Pacific dispatching all the way from Kansas City.

At McLean, the train had to take the siding.


The color-position lights will not guard this interlocking much longer. The Texas Eagle has a clear road.


In due course, it shows up.


The color-position at the east siding switch protects the Eagle. Note that the pole lines and electrical lockers reflect the onetime double track through here.

INSUFFICIENT ALTERNATIVES?

Congress won't use the Highway Trust Fund to build roads, and the resulting congestion, along with rising gas prices piques interest in high-speed trains.

Congress is considering a six-year Amtrak funding bill co-sponsored by 40 senators that would provide the first matching federal grants for rail projects.The measure proposes $100 million in first-year grants, paltry considering that California alone needs $40 billion for a mammoth bullet train project that would link San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles and San Diego.

Some argue federal money would be better spent to research electric-powered cars and other cutting-edge travel alternatives, rather than the ribbons of steel that triggered America's westward expansion in the 1800s.

"Solutions to our current problems have to be found, not imposed from previous centuries. High-speed rail is just a polished version of 19th century technology," said William Garrison, co-author of "Tomorrow's Transportation" and a retired civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

But supporters contend high-speed trains could be an important alternative, rivaling even air travel once home-to-airport travel times and delays cause by airport security measures are taken into account.

The preceding paragraphs suggest the only choices are an update of the Overland Limited, complete with Buffalo Bill pluggin' bison from the rear platform, or a souped-up Europeanized Electroliner. There is a simpler solution: amend or repeal the speed restrictions the Federal Railroad Administration inherited from the Interstate Commerce Commission holding train speeds to 79 mph (125 km/h) on signalled tracks. The regulation requiring the use of automatic train stop and cab signalling to run at higher speeds reeks of cartel-management in which railroads that made such investments sought a return on their investment that was being undercut by railroads that had not made such investments. But safe operation at speeds in the 110-125 range was possible on jointed rail protected by automatic block signals and regularly done with steam locomotives.

To accomplish something similar today involves cost overruns and implementation delays.

Illinois has sunk about $80 million into track and crossing improvements over a decade, but has finished less than half of a planned high-speed route from Chicago to St. Louis that would shave 90 minutes off the current 5 1/2-hour train ride.

Completing the estimated $400 million project will take years, but is projected to boost ridership from 300,000 last year to 1.2 million, said George Weber, chief of the Illinois Department of Transportation's passenger rail division.

Weber said trains could begin running at 110 mph by 2009 on 120 miles of the 280-mile route after the state recently settled on safety technology that will ensure faster trains can coexist with cars and slow-moving freight traffic that shares the line.

"To think this state (Illinois) has known for 10 years how to get Chicago-to-St. Louis to three hours and 45 minutes, and we kind of languish at five and a half to six hours," Harnish said. "Imagine what difference that would make to the St. Louis economy if you could get to Chicago by train (that much quicker)."

Humph. It used to be called sharp dispatching and disciplined railroading, including ascertaining whether all superior trains due on the schedule had arrived and left, and perhaps a provision that inferior trains would clear the scheduled time of superior trains by fifteen (rather than five or ten) minutes to preclude signal checks. Meanwhile, politicians have a chronic case of Shinkansen envy.

The massive project, which would lay all new track, could complete its first phase from San Francisco to Los Angeles within 15 years if voters approve a $10 billion bond issue scheduled for next year. But the vote has been pushed back twice and could be postponed again because of worries that it could hinder the state's bonding authority for roads, schools and other projects.

"How can we say we can't afford this in California, the biggest state in the country, when these systems are being built all over the world? ... It's a matter of priority," said Dan Leavitt, deputy director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor at Penn State University, says high-speed rail will continue to languish unless lawmakers provide the same financial backing as highways and air travel. He said some could be swayed if high-profile projects such as California's succeed.

"I don't think there's any question that it would help build momentum for making this kind of service a reality where it makes sense to have it," Spychalski said. "There just needs to be a political will, and right now not enough elected officials see it as a viable alternative."

I repeat: there are simpler reforms that will make improved running times possible almost immediately, and at much lower first cost. With greater domestic interest in the rail network, it's the right time to consider them.

The Illinois cornfields whizzing past Mark Hardacre's view from the Amtrak cafe car had nothing on the memorable splendor the Australian had already taken in on his trans-America adventure - the Pacific Ocean so vast and blue off California's coast. The emerald green of the Northwest forests. The majesty of the snowcapped Rockies.

But the cheery man from New South Wales was impressed with a couple of things he'd not seen in three previous Amtrak treks across this nation's rails over the past two decades - Americans seeming to outnumber tourists, and far fewer empty seats.

"It's good to see the Americans starting to use their trains, because if they don't use them they'll lose them," Hardacre, 53, said recently as Amtrak click-clacked its way from St. Louis to Chicago, one leg of his monthlong sightseeing trip with his wife, Janice.

Yes, the continued political (not necessarily partisan, read the full article carefully) wrangling over Amtrak funding makes the carrier's job more difficult, but the loss of institutional memory over such things as ascertaining that superior trains have arrived or left or of the discipline of keeping to time contribute.

Amtrak says the lack of stable funding holds it back, leaving it unable to commit to infrastructure improvements. It still uses some equipment dating back half a century and cannot add new rail cars it says it can easily fill on some routes.

The service also continues to be nagged by travel delays, mostly because it must share the tracks with freight haulers that own the rails and charge Amtrak a modest fee - $90 million in the last fiscal year - for using them. With freight traffic soaring in recent years, Amtrak's on-time performance slid to an average of 68 percent last year, its worst showing since the 1970s.

Poor on-time performance is probably a bigger killer of repeat business than slow running times. A mile-a-minute train that isn't laid out by"freight train interference" is probably a better option than a 90 mph version that is (and do the math: over a 200-300 mile corridor, there's not that much time advantage anyway.)

Between last October and March, Amtrak's riders numbered 14.3 million, up 5 percent over the previous year and sailing toward another record.

At least some of that growth might be tied to the investment by Illinois and 13 other states in short-distance corridors Amtrak otherwise wouldn't offer, essentially paying for service where they see a need.

Last fall, Amtrak added two state-financed roundtrips between St. Louis and Chicago and one apiece between from Quincy and Carbondale to the Windy City. Ridership spiked by 189,823 for the first two-thirds of this fiscal year, bringing the total passenger count in the state to 670,605.

Amtrak chalks it up to convenience.

Before adding the trains between St. Louis and Chicago, for example, the day's first Amtrak reached St. Louis about 2:30 p.m., just 45 minutes before the last train out, commonly forcing riders to spend the night.

But since last year's expansion, Amtrak's first arrival in St. Louis from Chicago is about noon, and the last train leaves for Chicago five hours later, enabling Chicagoans to attend a St. Louis Rams or Cardinals game or visit the cultural sites for an afternoon and head back the same day.

Before the expansion, the only departure times out of Carbondale for Chicago were 3 a.m. and 4 p.m. The state added a breakfast-time departure, and ridership blossomed.

To William Rechtenwald, it's a real bargain. The journalism teacher at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale takes Amtrak several times a year to Chicago, finding the service comfortable enough, roughly $100 per round trip cheaper than driving and less hassle than maneuvering through congested freeways.

"I'm a fan of Amtrak," he said. "It's a much wiser choice than driving."

Route connectivity also matters. That Lincoln Service allows St. Louisans to attend a Bear or Cub game or visit a museum and go home, and there are options for going on to Milwaukee as well, although those work less well as a day excursion.

FASTER, PLEASE.  The restoration of the Alton Route continues.

Illinois has reached an agreement with Union Pacific for the next phase of upgrades to the Chicago-St. Louis rail corridor used by Amtrak Lincoln Service trains and the Texas Eagle. This phase includes $685 million of work between Lincoln and Dwight, Ill., and between Alton, Ill., and the Mississippi River near St. Louis.


Upgrades for faster speeds between Chicago and St. Louis began a decade ago, but the pace sped up last fall with the acquisition of a federal grant through the high speed rail program. Last year’s work focused on the line between Alton and Lincoln, Ill. The work lined up for this year extends the upgrades in both directions. The work will eventually enable 110-mph passenger train speeds, in an effort to reduce city-to-city travel times to around 4 hours.


In an effort to give track workers unimpeded access to the line, Amtrak is diverting trains 21 and 22, the Texas Eagle, during three periods this spring. The trains will run over Union Pacific’s ex-Chicago & Eastern Illinois trackage via Findlay, Ill., April 2-9, April 16-24, and May 1-9.

Those reroutes suggest the Lincoln Service trains connecting Chicago, Bloomington, Springfield, and St. Louis will be annulled or replaced in part by buses. Such a development wiped out a planned spring break trip to the Lincoln Presidential Library. Fortunately, the special exhibit dealing with Mr Lincoln's Cabinet will remain until August.

Some Illinois officials are enthusiastic, others less so.

"The governors of these other states that have given up their money can stand by and wave at our trains when they go by. We’re going to move people, we’re going to freight, we’re going to set a standard for America. It starts right here in Chicago," [Democratic Senator Richard] Durbin said.


But not everybody in Illinois is gung-ho about fast trains. Freshman Congressman Joe Walsh said the government can’t afford to spend the money and he doubted their cost effectiveness because Americans love their cars. He said governors like Scott in Florida had the right idea by giving up federal money for rail projects.


"I respect the governors who have done that, that clearly is not what Pat Quinn is about," Walsh, whose district is in northern Illinois.


Illinois’ other senator, Republican U.S. Mark Kirk, supports high speed rail including federal funding and believes it should be a private-public partnership so that trains move with the speed and reliability to serve consumers who would otherwise would fly, Kirk spokesman Lance Trover said.


When high-speed trains are eventually traveling up to 110 mph, the trip between St. Louis and Chicago could be cut by 90minutes to less than four hours.

That car-love the right honorable gentleman refers to might not be so attractive in the face of five bucks a gallon to fuel up the land-yacht.  You'll pay more for the privilege of being fondled by airport security and waiting half an hour to be seated in your aluminum sardine can, which you'll then have to wait for half an hour to disembark through one door.  Even a conventional train looks good compared to that.

U.S. airlines have raised fares at least six times this year as they try to offset rising jet fuel costs. The last attempt failed when other airlines decided not to follow American Airlines when it raised prices earlier this month, also by $10 per round trip. Cheap seats will be harder to find this year, said Rick Seaney, chief executive officer of travel website FareCompare.com.

That's the same American Airlines that once, famously, attempted to entice Braniff to match its price increases in Texas. Good old dominant strategy strikes again!

FRIDAY WILL BE A SNOW DAY FOR CHICAGO OFFICE WORKERS.

No longer do railroads employ legions of extra men to shovel out switch points and service the heaters.  Thus when cold and snow are on offer, management prefers to avoid diverging moves where practicable.  "With severe cold forecast for the Chicago region, Metra has made the decision to operate reduced schedules on all its lines on Friday, Jan. 23."  The reduced schedules are for the most part the Saturday schedules, hourly or two-hourly for much of the day, with very few expresses and none of the Elmhurst or Congress Park turnback trains, and McHenry is out of luck.

TONIGHT'S RAILROAD READING. The four busiest passenger train stations in the midwest are Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Normal, Illinois. (Those figures probably reflect only Amtrak loadings: does the new commuter rail service in the Cities call at Midway Station?)

Normal Mayor Chris Koos traveled the approximately 135 miles to Chicago on Friday to participate in a conference that Gov. Pat Quinn called to improve passenger and freight rail operations in Illinois, and to be prepared to get off on a fast start when $8 billion in federal stimulus grants for high-speed rail are awarded to the states sometime before spring.

The meeting offered Koos the opportunity to spread the word about a downtown renewal program in Normal that includes building a modern transportation terminal in the town's central business district and surrounding it with office-residential redevelopment that is designed for people to walk, ride a bus or pedal a bike to where they are going instead of drive a vehicle.

The centerpiece of the Uptown Normal Renewal Plan is a new transportation center that will offer multiple travel choices -- Amtrak on the Lincoln Service and Texas Eagle routes; interstate and regional buses to other Illinois cities as well as destinations in Indiana, Missouri and Iowa; local cabs serving the town as well as the Central Illinois Regional Airport; and shuttle buses to O'Hare International Airport and Midway Airport in Chicago.

A new Marriott hotel and conference center opened late last year about 100 yards from the Amtrak stop. When the transportation center is built, "the walk from the hotel will be 50 yards," Koos said."It gives people the opportunity to come into a community for a conference, get off the train, go to the hotel, spend two or three days in a lively business district and never see a car the whole time," he said.

But the redevelopment program, which was started in 1999, is only about one-third complete. It needs an economic lift that a statewide rail modernization program can help provide, officials said."One hundred ten mile an hour trains would cut the travel time from Normal to Chicago to 1 hour 45 minutes," Koos said. "It's so important to getting us closer to the Chicago region."

That's not much of an improvement on the two hour timings the Gulf Mobile and Ohio's Abraham Lincoln and Alton Limited, which called only at Joliet, offered in 1954. Because much of the potential Bloomington - Normal traffic might originate in the southwestern suburbs, better connections between Metra and the Amtrak service, and more frequent service, will help, particularly if the plan is to provide a network of trains making possible, for example, easier movement between Bloomington and Kalamazoo or South Bend or Milwaukee.

Then comes Paul Kennedy, with more ambitious ideas.

This artery-clogging phenomenon of millions of cars stuck on so-called highways is also to be observed in many other cities across the globe; but that is hardly a consolation. It simply suggests that, as the world’s population rises from around 6.5 billion to around 9 billion by mid-century, existing assumptions about dependency on the automobile will need to change.

The growing difficulties of traveling by air within one’s own country are even more obvious, and were so even before the latest terrorist incident, even before the 9/11 attacks. The challenge of getting to the airport, checking in two hours early, going through security, learning of delays and cancellations, retrieving one’s luggage afterward, then collapsing exhaustedly at one’s destination, seems to rise holiday by holiday, year by year.

So, why not think more ambitiously? And start with some obvious routes, such as Chicago-New York (1,160 kilometers.)? A proper high-speed-train system would give hard-pressed air travelers a real alternative to the car and the plane. It is being done elsewhere. Domestic flights between Hamburg in northern Germany and Munich (612 kilometers) are shriveling because the high-speed trains do it better.

That's an old proposal, perhaps made better by the provision of direct service to Cleveland and Buffalo or Pittsburgh (there is the little problem of the Alleghenies, something that Hamburg - Munich doesn't have to contend with). Professor Kennedy is going the Chicago - New York Electric Air Line better, however, suggesting a five- or six-hour trip, and he sees the utility of such a service in China. The highway congestion is something that matters. But Passenger Rail advocates must understand that railroading, North American style, is the best in the world at hauling goods, something Coyote Blog (via Photon Courier) spells out for his readers.

The US has not been “asleep” — at least the private individuals who drive progress have not. We have had huge revolutions in transportation over the last decades during the same period that European nations were sinking billions of dollars into pretty high-speed passenger rails systems for wealthy business travelers. One such revolution has been containerization, invented here in the US and quickly spreading around the world. Containerization has revolutionized shipping, speeding schedules and reducing costs (and all the while every improvement step was fought by the US and certain local governments). To the extent American businesses are not investing today, it has more to do with regime uncertainty, not knowing what new taxes or restrictions are coming next from Congress, than any lack of vision.

I would argue that the US has the world’s largest commitment to rail where it really matters. But that is what private actors do, make investments that actually make sense rather than just gain one prestige (anyone know the most recent company Warren Buffet has bought?) The greens should be demanding that the world emulate us, rather than the other way around. But the lure of shiny bullet trains and grand passenger concourses will always cause folks like [Huffington Post contributor Joel] Epstein to swoon.

We've been consistent advocates for the freight railroads, and regular readers know the story of containers. We will note, however, that a railroad network capable of moving 618 containers in a 3.5 mile long train at speeds of up to 70 mph is a network with a great deal of potential for moving people. The advantage, however, might be in relatively short trips in metropolitan areas where the expressways are clogged and the cost of additional highway capacity is great, and between medium-sized cities subject to the tender mercies of hub-and-spoke air carriers.

CORRIDORS IMPROVED IN GEOLOGIC TIME?

Mixing passenger trains with North American freight trains has its challenges.  "North American freight railroads set the pace for the world, that Passenger Rail advocates who don't understand the freight technology hurt their own cause, that the passenger train authorities can do better by working with the freight railroads, that incremental improvements in the passenger service, including more frequent service topping out at 90 or 110 with interconnectivity has more potential than splashy bullet trains for their own sake, and that some freight railroads are unnecessarily precautionary."

SPEEDING UP THE TRAINS. The Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act includes substantial moneys for safety improvements and provision for the equipment to permit faster running by Amtrak.

Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away.

Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic.

Driving, which results in more than 40,000 fatalities a year, would take a back seat as a transportation choice, proponents say.

So, too, would air travel as consumers factor in the time it takes to go through airport security, the hassle of flying and the time spent traveling from outlying airports.

Travel times of almost 51/2 hours on Amtrak's route between Chicago and St. Louis would be cut to 3 hours and 49 minutes on a high-speed train, according to preliminary estimates.

In the past year, more than 501,000 rides were taken on Amtrak's Lincoln Service route between Chicago and St. Louis, a 284-mile trip, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Some 1.2 million rides a year would be taken when the route is served by high-speed trains, according projections by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

In addition to the congressional action, the Federal Railroad Administration last week approved grants to Illinois to install train-control and cab-signaling systems on part of the route to facilitate high-speed trains.

A high-speed rail line between Chicago and the Twin Cities could be running within five years, according to U.S. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The roughly eight-hour trip on Amtrak from Chicago to St. Paul would be cut to about 51/2 hours under the working proposal.

Planners envision the line running from Chicago up through Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities and eventually Duluth, while separate routes from Chicago would extend east to Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati.

It's apparent there would be a strong market. Even today, with slow service and a poor on-time performance record, Amtrak finished fiscal 2008 last week with its sixth straight year of ridership growth.

I've provided an image of a traditional bi-level streamlined train capable of 90 mph operation. The news article has a graphic giving the anticipated travel times after the upgrade. It has no historical context. I've augmented that graphic's presentation of current and proposed running times with best running times from my April 1951 Official Guide. From Chicago to

1. St. Louis (110 mph line) 5:20 current, 3:49 proposed; 5:10 in 1951. Some of the track on this line is good for 110 and the alley tracks through Springfield have been improved. I'll be nice and not mention an electric air line proposal from the early 1900s for this route.
2. Milwaukee (110 mph) 1:29 present, 1:04 proposed; 1:15. Regular readers know where I stand on this service. That accelerated timing is four minutes slower than a Milwaukee Road proposal in 1938, using streamlined 4-6-4s, that was shelved under an agreement with the Chicago and North Western, a competing carrier that could match a 75 minute timing but could not manage a 60 minute timing.
3. Detroit (110 mph) 5:36 current, 3:46 proposed; 5:10. There's some 100 mph track in western Michigan already. There is more potential on this line at some of the intermediate stops, including Dearborn and Birmingham for business travelers and Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo for student traffic than there is in Detroit itself.
4. Cleveland (110 mph) 6:24 current, 4:22 proposed; 5:47. The map suggests a routing along the old New York Central, which calls at South Bend and Toledo and some small cities.
5. Cincinnati (110 mph) 8:10 current (triweekly), 4:08 proposed; 5:30 using the New York Central's route via Indianapolis.
6. Carbondale (90 mph) 5:30 current, 4:22 proposed; 4:32. The Illinois Central used to run extra sections of trains at college breaks, on a 100 mph railroad. Corporate downsizing included removing the safety appliances and much of the second main track.
7. Omaha (79 mph) 8:37 current, 7:02 proposed; 8:57 using the proposed Rocky Mountain Rocket via Des Moines, the Denver Zephyr made it in 7:30 on the current Amtrak route, and the Midwest Hiawatha took 8:30 on trackage that has since been torn out. The Des Moines route is more thickly settled. It requires work.
8. St. Paul (110 mph) 8:05 current, 5:31 proposed; 6:15 on the Afternoon Hiawatha or the Morning Zephyr. The high-speed plan includes a Watertown-Madison-Portage diversion from the current route. Will there be a European-style reversal of direction in Madison, or will the station be somewhere on the east side of town, remote from the university and the capitol?

I'm enthusiastic about this proposal, although I'll believe it when I see it implemented.

IT DOES LITTLE GOOD TO RUN FASTER IN THE COUNTRY.

We left off our story of the Texas Eagle from San Antonio to Chicago at bedtime, still in Texas.  A brief, more current report on a weekend trip to Springfield on one of the speeded-up corridor trains hinted at the troubles hampering timely operation. "On the one hand, it's exhilarating to buzz past the traffic on Interstate 55 and the remnants of Route 66 at speeds up to 110 mph; on the other hand, the track work at Joliet and the delays attendant to trains running out of course on what is still a single-track railroad defeat all that the fast running does."  So, too, will delays hammer the Eagle.  A Chicago Tribune story, datelined about the same day I left San Antonio, notes that the carrier is aware of the consequences of delays.

Amtrak ridership dropped an average of 4 percent in Illinois on downstate corridors with connections to Chicago in fiscal 2014, the passenger railroad reported Tuesday, putting much of the blame on late arrivals and departures caused by freight train interference.

The problem of freight congestion blocking passenger trains is affecting Amtrak service across the Midwest and also stretching from Chicago — Amtrak's busiest hub — to the East Coast, officials said.

"Delays of four hours or more for Amtrak trains operating between Chicago and Cleveland have become a near daily occurrence,'' said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. "These and other major delays have ripple effects across the Amtrak national system."

Amtrak's Capitol Limited trains, which operate between Chicago and Washington, D.C., were late 97 percent of the time in September, records show.

No kidding. Amtrak management set out to mitigate their damages.

[Amtrak president Joseph] Boardman acknowledged that apart from investment in tracks, tunnels and bridges, Amtrak also needs to do more to help itself.

"Amtrak senior management needs to understand we are failing in Chicago because we cannot get trains in and out on time," he said. "We want a change in operating plans so that we get an on-time (departure out of Chicago) even if the train comes in late from the East."

Part of the problem turning trains at Chicago is insufficient rolling stock, the westbound rake often being the only cars available for the eastbound rake. Then the hours of service law affects Toledo based crews turning to return.

Those problems aren't as severe on the regional trains, where 110 mph capable stock off a Michigan train might be sent to St. Louis, and an inbound train from St. Louis turns for Michigan. But the delays tear a big hole in whatever time advantage the free rein to 110 confers, and riders notice.

In Illinois, Amtrak ridership declined 5 percent in fiscal 2014 compared with 2013 on routes between Chicago and Carbondale and Chicago and Quincy, according to Amtrak data. Passenger traffic on the Chicago-to-St. Louis route, which is being upgraded to 110-mph service, was down 3 percent.

Amtrak ridership on the three routes totaled 1.3 million in fiscal 2014, which was about 52,300 fewer passenger trips than in fiscal 2013, according to Amtrak records.

Much of that time is being lost just getting through St. Louis and Chicago.  The Eagle, due out of St. Louis at 7.55, reaches Gateway Station at 8.37, plenty of time to look at mists rising off the Mississippi River south of town during breakfast, train is ready to go at 9 am, but we're awaiting signals to clear, or perhaps for a maintenance permit to expire, until 9.23.  Alton, 27 circuitous rail miles away, 10.26 - 10.27; now the pace picks up; Carlinville, conditional stop, no passengers, pass 10.57; Springfield 11.39 - 11.42; Lincoln 12.10 - 12.11, evidence of recent track work, nothing like the sound of freshly ground rail at speed.  Bloomington 12.42 - 12.47; Pontiac 1.15 - 1.16; Joliet double stops, 2.12 - 2.16; now in Chicago terminal area, encounter freight interference near Argo and Brighton Park, arrive Chicago 3.35, 1 hour 43 minutes late.  Fortunately, there's a semi-fast scoot for Elburn that gets away from North Western Station on time, at 4.11.

A resident of suburban Chicago or St. Louis might contemplate using Joliet or Alton as a station, rather than going downtown, but unlike the airport station outside Milwaukee, neither is convenient to expressways nor provides much parking.

THEY CONTINUE TO CATCH ON.  Trains for America points to a Washington Monthly article, The Case for Not-Quite-So-High-Speed Rail.  First, a refresher.

The Superintendent has long maintained that North American freight railroads set the pace for the world, that Passenger Rail advocates who don't understand the freight technology hurt their own cause, that the passenger train authorities can do better by working with the freight railroads, that incremental improvements in the passenger service, including more frequent service topping out at 90 or 110 with interconnectivity has more potential than splashy bullet trains for their own sake, and that some freight railroads are unnecessarily precautionary.

Author Phillip Longman begins his article with the obligatory foaming about Germany's fourth-generation Electroliners, but he takes the time to explore the rail network and educate himself.

Having arrived in Cologne faster than I needed to, I decided to take the longer, more scenic route back to Frankfurt, which costs just $72, riding the old West Rhine Railway. Begun in 1844, it’s a conventional railway that twists and turns mostly along the banks of the Rhine, passing beneath many high-perched castles and vineyards. It also provides access to such midsize cities as Koblenz and Mainz, and to such bucolic spots as the famous Rock of Lorelei, all of which the new high-speed rail line misses in order to save time.

Because of its more circuitous route and local stops, and because passenger trains on the Rhine Valley line also have to share tracks with many freight trains, these trains are slower than those on the new high-speed line. Yet they still max out at about 100 mph, which means that they only take a bit more than an hour longer to go from Cologne to Frankfurt even as they serve more population centers in between. The line is vibrant, with local and express passenger trains passing through any given station every fifteen to twenty minutes. By European or Asian standards, this service doesn’t qualify as high-speed rail, but it is faster on average than most American railways, and frequent enough to provide vital connectivity throughout the Rhine Valley.

My point? Yes, bullet trains speeding at 180 mph or more from major city to major city are great for business execs in a hurry and on an expense account. But the more conventional, cheaper, “fast enough” high-speed rail lines like the West Rhine line are the real backbone of the German passenger rail system and that of most other industrialized nations. And it is from these examples that America has the most to learn, especially since it now looks as if the U.S. isn’t going to build any real high-speed rail lines, except possibly in California, anytime soon. In an ironic twist, between the mounting concern over the state and federal deficits and growing Republican and NIMBY opposition to high-speed rail, the Obama administration is being forced to settle for incremental projects that will only bring passenger rail service up to the kind of standards found on the West Rhine line. And that’s a good thing, provided Republicans don’t succeed in killing passenger trains in the United States altogether, as they are increasingly wont to try.

Look no further than the Chicago to St. Louis line, which the latest issue of Trains suggests will become an expressway for container trains once Union Pacific completes the Joliet intermodal yard and the state gets the 110 mph passenger trains running.  That line runs alongside Interstate 55 in open country and the thought of 90 mph piggybackers and 110 mph Lincoln Service trains blowing by the road-rage set has its appeal.

But as great as it would be to have passenger service as fast and elegant as the TGV in the United States, there are many reasons not to put our first dollars into such an ambitious project. First off, building a truly high-speed rail system in today’s America would be so expensive, disruptive, contentious, and politically risky that it just might not be possible. It would require, for example, securing brand-new rights-of-way, because trains traveling at more than around 125 mph can’t share tracks with slower freight or passenger trains. This in turn would require using eminent domain to secure millions of acres of real estate, and these days, in the U.S., that would involve endless litigation, environmental review, and the innumerable other processes that always stand to derail any large-scale infrastructure project.

Indeed.

The news tends to speak of Passenger Rail improvements in isolation. Chicago is a logical hub for a midwestern train network, heir to the Rockets and Zephyrs and Hiawathas and Arrows, provided the resulting trains are scheduled with a view toward connectivity.

Here's the East Coast version of the same story.

As it is, Amtrak’s service between Washington and Boston is already highly successful, even if it does not qualify as high-speed rail by world standards. The top speed obtained by any train is 150 mph, and that happens only in a brief segment of Rhode Island. The average speed is much lower, even to the point that the schedule today between New York and Boston is only nineteen minutes faster than that achieved by the New Haven Railroad’s “Merchants Limited” in 1954. But today’s service is fast enough for Amtrak to dominate the travel market among the intermediate points along the corridor. Tellingly, almost no one rides all the way from Boston to Washington, which takes seven hours on the Acela and costs more than flying. But the trains are nonetheless full despite steep fares, and ridership continues to mount.

That’s because most passengers are traveling between intermediate points where existing train service is more than competitive with alternative modes, such as battling the traffic on I-95 or catching a flight. Compared to airlines, for example, Amtrak has virtually a 100 percent market share of passenger trips between Philadelphia and New York, a 60 percent share between Washington and New York, and a 50 percent share between New York and Boston. On each trip between Washington and Boston, more than half the passengers will get off at either Philadelphia or New York and are replaced by other passengers. From the travelers’ point of view, it doesn’t matter much whether the train goes 150 mph or even 300 mph, since they will only be on it for a short time anyway. What matters to them far more is that the trains are frequent, pleasant, reasonably priced, and reliable. Recently, after Florida rejected federal money for its high-speed project, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood redirected $795 million to upgrade some of the most heavily used sections of the Northeast Corridor. This money will increase speeds from 135 to 160 miles per hour on critical segments, but much more importantly it will improve on-time performance and add more seats to accommodate the continuing surge in ridership.

Standard stuff for regular readers; glad to see the Influential People are beginning to catch on.

Frequency of service is also often more important than top speed. Only two passenger trains serve Cleveland, for example, and both come through, in both directions, between 12:59 and 5:35 a.m. It’s surprising how many people use these trains nonetheless. Recently, after business in Cleveland that kept me there late, I decided to take a sleeper car home rather than spending an extra night in a hotel room and flying out in the morning. I counted some seventy-five people in the waiting room even at two a.m. Many more would be taking the train in and out of Cleveland if only there were reliable daytime service to nearby points such as Pittsburgh, Toledo, South Bend, Akron, Indianapolis, or Chicago, all of which could be reached by conventional trains in far less time, and at far less cost, than flying. (Sadly, Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich has rejected $400 million in federal stimulus funds that would have had such service up and running in short order. Republican Governor Scott Walker has waved away more than $800 million in federal money that would have brought similarly practical and thrifty passenger rail service to the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and St. Paul corridor.) Providing connectivity to small towns and midsize cities that currently lack affordable air service, or any air service at all, is one of the most important potential benefits of passenger rail, and you don’t need 300-mph bullet trains to pull it off.

Conventional trains running between Washington and such nearby cities to the south as Richmond, Charlottesville, Durham, and Charlotte already attract a growing ridership, and would attract a larger one if they were more frequent and reliable, as well as better integrated with trains running north of D.C. along the Northeast Corridor. The minimal investment needed in new track capacity would also improve freight service, thereby getting more trucks off the road and improving the driving experience for those who don’t want to take the train. It also would likely spur a good amount of economic development. Midsize cities such as Lynchburg or Petersburg, Virginia, which once thrived because of their strategic position on the nation’s rail map, might experience a real estate boom if it were possible to live there and still have easy access to the business opportunities and cultural amenities of Washington, Philadelphia, or New York. Projects currently under way will do the same for cities like Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Springfield, Illinois, by providing improved connections with Chicago. Making such incremental improvements might not stir the hearts of Americans the way eclipsing the French or the Chinese in high-speed rail might, but it’s still a sensible course that will gradually start rebuilding a rail culture in the U.S. As more and more Americans outside the Northeast Corridor experience practical, reliable, conventional train service that beats flying or driving, the constituency for super-expensive, super-fast trains will build as it has abroad. Until then “fast enough” high-speed rail is good enough.

Yeah.

In Trains, columnist Fred W. Frailey makes a number of observations.  Two are particularly salient to Mr Longman's argument: build more capacity in existing 79 mph passenger railroads, and don't expect the profitable freight railroads to go along with projects that will reduce their capacity.

That noted, there's plenty of potential for strengthening the Passenger Rail network and giving the streamliners free rein, once again, to 110.