MAKE NO SMALL PLANS.

The mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin, would like to make his city an Amtrak hub.

Mayor Eric Genrich told Local 5 News he’s building a coalition to push national rail officials to consider Green Bay a hub for a national passenger rail system.

“We checked in with Amtrak fairly recently,” Genrich said Thursday night. “The next step in the process is convincing the Federal Railroad Administration that this corridor is worthy of being part of their national corridor plan.”

Once upon a time, Green Bay was the northern end of a corridor service linking Chicago, Milwaukee, and Green Bay along three routes on both sides of Lake Winnebago.  The Chicago and North Western operated something like that hub, with a number of trains terminating in Green Bay, while the services for Ashland or the Upper Peninsula cut cars northbound (timetable west)and added cars southbound.  The Milwaukee Road was also in on the action, with an overnight Copper Country Limited and a day Chippewa, which, for a while was a Hiawatha.  Some of the timetables were set up with the longer distance trains in Green Bay at the same time to swap cars: the turn of dining, lounge, and additional coaches on the Flambeau 400 being railway ballet of the highest order.

Alas, both the trains and the tracks vanished, with The Milwaukee Road severed somewhere north of Hilbert Junction, the Fox Cities side of the North Western severed south of West Bend, and the Lake Shore Division cut north of Sheboygan.

In addition, further back in transportation history, the Chicago and North Western once ran passenger trains toward Wausau and the Twin Cities.  Much of that trackage is also gone.

Replacing that which has been destroyed will be more expensive than rebuilding that which has been downgraded.