Note the timings: leave Chicago at 8.00 and arrive across the street from the boat dock at 11.30. The steam excursion out of Milwaukee has a three-hour schedule. I'm not sure what adjustments for inflation and for the additional expenses of a steam special I should make to that $8.15 fare. In those days, a box lunch with a standard-issue meat sandwich was probably less likely to provoke finicky kids or diet-obsessive parents.
The Milwaukee used push-pull gallery coaches from the Chicago commuter train pool. Those cars would otherwise sit idle the entire weekend. (Such cars made one regular round trip between Milwaukee and Chicago at the time.) Finding train crews qualified to work the cars posed no problems.
It's the ability to shift equipment from one use to another that makes me skeptical of proposals to further fragment the U.S. passenger train service, such as this offering by Green City Transit.
Amtrak should operate into brands much like European rail travel does. This will help Americans identify with what particular service they want. You can read below.
Not a good idea. In the United Kingdom, the continual and fearless shuffling and rebranding of passenger carriers spawns confusion, as well as added expense hiring-in stock. Operators borrow stock that does not bear the operator's service marks, and passengers are not sure whether their tickets are valid. (We have the same problem with Metra tickets around Chicago or Metro-North and New Jersey Transit tickets around New York not being good on Amtrak). Better to have a smaller number of operators, with more freedom to shuffle equipment as traffic warrants.
Back to that history lesson: in that summer of 1970, there still was train service from Chicago to Wausau, Wisconsin, involving a connection at New Lisbon. (The service ended in October.) The passenger, however, was dealing with one issuing carrier, The Milwaukee Road, no dealing only with Badger Cross Country at the Chicago ticket office and then finding the Marathon County Passenger Transport Executive's vending machine at New Lisbon.
