WHAT AMTRAK INHERITED. Rising gasoline prices have stimulated ridership, prompting strengthened formations and higher fares.

"We believe the largest single reason is that people want to avoid the higher cost of driving their own vehicle," said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. "People are looking for options."

On the Hiawatha route, which includes seven trains from Chicago to Milwaukee daily and carries a large number of business travelers, ridership is up 22 percent, to 528,335. It rose 40 percent in June alone. The adult fare to Milwaukee is now $22 each way.

Amtrak added a 70-seat coach to the Milwaukee trains last year, but Magliari said: "These trains can be very full, and because the seats are unreserved there can be times when passengers have to stand."

Though the $22 fare to Milwaukee is more than most drivers would pay for gas, he said, the total driving cost is higher because of tolls, parking and wear on a vehicle.

There are many rail passengers and passenger rail advocates whose only knowledge of passenger service is Amtrak. From Journey to Amtrak, this map on page 8 depicts the network the day before Amtrak. Note three different ways to get from Denver to Chicago, two different ways to get from Denver to Kansas City, two different ways to get from Chicago to Detroit, and the network of Florida service.


There are a few oddities. There was train service to Winnipeg, but with a change of trains at Crookston Passenger Station. (I don't remember if that was a Burlington Northern tax protest. The carrier set up a number of stations in freight yards, outside city limits, to avoid union terminal switching charges and city property taxes.) The Green Bay to Ashland train made its last run on January 3, 1971 and was protected by a bus thereafter. The coast route Milwaukee to Green Bay to Menominee, Michigan was a Sunday only service. (I have been through numerous Chicago and North Western timetables and Official Guide listings and still don't understand where that schedule came from.) Some of the Nebraska and Wyoming service, as well as that twig east of Atlanta, was in mixed trains (a coach sometimes up front, sometimes doubling as caboose.) Note also the Baltimore to Buffalo service.

Don't be fooled by the network of service in Ohio and Indiana. Much of that was Penn Central coach-only service, which one author of the era characterized as "grubby one-coach-and-a-flexi-van" trains. What the map doesn't illustrate is what had already gone. At one time there was an extensive service, offered by the likes of Rock Island and Frisco and Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Burlington and Missouri Pacific linking Kansas City and St. Louis to Texas and Oklahoma points as well as to Memphis and Birmingham and New Orleans, and a Front Range service from Denver to Texas points including Dallas and Houston. These areas, which were not thickly settled in those pre-air-conditioning days, offered scant support for passenger trains. We now know much of that territory as the Sun Belt, but the railroad tradition might well be prehistory.