THE RENT SEEKING INVOLVES MORE THAN THE ROODHOUSE DOODLEBUG LINE.

I've been having some fun with Canadian National seeking ownership of the Springfield to Kansas City withered arm of the Alton Route, and now Amtrak is getting in on the fun.

Amtrak says that allowing CN to operate the lines would further hurt the already woeful on-time performance of its passenger trains operating on the former Illinois Central between Chicago and Gilman, Ill., as well as on the joint KCS-Union Pacific line between East St. Louis, Ill., and Godfrey, Ill.

In addition, Amtrak says CN would run more freight traffic – either additional or longer trains – over seven other line segments that currently host passenger service. These include a 250-mile portion of the former Illinois Central Chicago-New Orleans main line; three CN lines in Michigan; a short segment on CN in Memphis; as well as short sections of UP trackage in Kansas City and Springfield.

There's all of one Amtrak train on those Michigan segments; I forget the story behind Amtrak and the Reagan Administration going along with singling the Illinois Central main south of Kankakee and removing the automatic train stop that made the line good for 100 mph running; and at the moment there's only the much-maligned City of New Orleans and the one daily Carbondale turn on the section between Chicago and Gilman, where trains would head over to Springfield to get on the Roodhouse Doodlebug Line.

Amtrak’s July 12 filing with the Surface Transportation Board dredges up the long-running dispute over on-time performance of passenger trains on the former Illinois Central, even citing a 1991 Trains Magazine story that noted City of New Orleans on-time performance fell to 15% after IC single-tracked its main line in 1988 over Amtrak’s objections.

You'd think that a proof of concept for so-called precision scheduled railroading might include ... keeping the scheduled trains close to their schedule.

Amtrak pointed out that CN told the STB in 2015 that the biggest issue affecting the performance of Chicago-Carbondale service was a lack of capacity on the IC main line. Amtrak operates six daily trains over the line, including the City of New Orleans and the Illini/Saluki service between Chicago and Carbondale. (One of the Carbondale roundtrips is currently suspended.) CN sends 20 or more freights over the route each day.

Now, Amtrak notes, CN says that the Chicago-Gilman portion of the route has excess capacity that will enable it to handle two additional CN trains per day without interfering with Amtrak service. CN acknowledged that it has not performed a capacity analysis to measure the impact of additional freight traffic on Amtrak trains.

Those "capacity analyses" are often consultants messing around with fancier versions of Train Dispatcher, and the programmer's maxim, garbage in, garbage out, is still relevant.

It's becoming clear, though, that tearing up tracks for short term gain has not worked out well for the railroads. That Trains article includes images of an older article in which railroader Paul Schneider looked at the effects of singling The Main Line of Mid-America, as well as The Milwaukee Road through Wisconsin.  Ultimately, taxpayers might be on the hook for restoring those tracks to provide capacity for the additional Amtrak trains that might eventually be on offer.  Canadian Pacific were on board with Wisconsin's previous extension of the Hiawatha service to Madison, and Union Pacific might be willing to go along with restoring the second track on the Alton Route.