St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago (TCMC) second daily service

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All evidence that I have heard points to, as Jis mentioned, that it was likely the MN and WI DOTs that chose the name (maybe IL pitched in a few thoughts as well). I don't believe that Amtrak chose the name. Come to think of it, last September I heard a MnDOT rep on a public meeting mention that the state DOTs were working on a name themselves; presumably, the Borealis name is what came out of that. Personally I don't understand the issue giving this service a name like Borealis is, but to each their own.

I get that the Hiawatha is both a historical name in this corridor & the name of the Chi - Milwaukee service, but to be fair, how many (non-train/Amtrak nerd) people under the age of 60 in MN or WI have the foggiest idea about the Twin Cities Hiawatha? Of course in southeast WI people are much more aware of the name "Hiawatha," due to the existing service, but in MN, which is one of the main markets for the Borealis, it's not well known.

And for younger people under 30/35, and specifically college students who are huge potential users of this service, the name Hiawatha has no real meaning. Not to say its a "bad" name at all, but I don't think it will make any difference. Honestly Borealis is a pretty memorable and unique name, which might even be an actively positive thing.
 
I don't know who chose it. The point still stands against whomever did make the choice. Two swings and two misses? Will they get a third swing? I hope so.

You stated “it should be no surprise that Amtrak…” So, that implies you are placing the blame on Amtrak.
 
I guess it should be no surprise that Amtrak got two bites at the naming apple, and screwed up both of them.

The name should have Hiawatha in it, period. It is so simple even a caveman could do it. But not Amtrak.
I understand the historical reference, but there already is an Amtrak service named "Hiawatha." For folks who are not Amtrak buffs or regular riders, I don't think having multiple services named Hiawatha would be of good use.

Although there have been solid improvements, Amtrak's signage and wayfinding at Chicago Union Station (and the attitude of staff) still leaves much to be desired.

Likewise, there will hopefully be Amtrak service to Madison and Green Bay that will likely be continuations of what is now Hiawatha Service. Some differentiation is going to be needed.
 
I understand the historical reference, but there already is an Amtrak service named "Hiawatha." For folks who are not Amtrak buffs or regular riders, I don't think having multiple services named Hiawatha would be of good use.
Historically, The Milwaukee Road used Hiawatha as a suffix to various trains...in effect it was MILW parlance to denote a "streamliner", in the same sense that the Burlington used the name, "Zephyr", which, by the way, Amtrak still does today for the CZ and IZ...
 
Other names used multi-train historically, on these and affiliated lines included:

Eagle on the Missouri Pacific
Rocket on the Rock Island
Chief on the Santa Fe
City on the Union Pacific
400 on the North Western
Silver on the Seaboard
 
What the future holds is that there will be more Hiawathas between MKE and CHI. But SOME of them will be extended to GB, MSP, and MSN. What would be be confusing to non-foamers is that there are 4 completely different names for a train that goes between MKE and CHI. What would make a lot of sense would be to use Hiawatha as a suffix to each one.

MSP: Borealis Hiawatha; Twin Cities Hiawatha; 400 Hiawatha
MSN: Isthmus Hiawatha; Monona Hiawatha
GB: Bay Hiawatha; Fox Hiawatha
MKE: Hiawatha; Cream City Hiawatha

Those are just examples and there are many other good variations for each city.

These names would make a lot of sense as a family of trains all starting on the same CHI-MKE route. Regular users in MKE (which will still be the most-used city pair to Chicago in the Hiawatha system) will just need to know they can take any Hiawatha and won't have to remember four different names of trains they could use.
 
These names would make a lot of sense as a family of trains all starting on the same CHI-MKE route. Regular users in MKE (which will still be the most-used city pair to Chicago in the Hiawatha system) will just need to know they can take any Hiawatha and won't have to remember four different names of trains they could use.

Given that the Hiawatha is all-reserved, passengers will simply ride whatever train time and number is on the ticket they book. I doubt there are really that many passengers boarding based on train name.
 
My own votes would be for:

Hiawatha Service for local CHI-MKE trains
Twin Cities Hiawatha for CHI-MKE-STP
Fox Cities Hiawatha for CHI-MKE-GRB
Badger Hiawatha for CHI-MKE-MSN

Nobody is gonna get on the wrong train based on name confusion -- destination and time are usually announced, and we should only so lucky to someday have frequent enough service that such confusion could even be possible.

Train names are something which adds personality to passenger rail travel. I do prefer coridoor names versus every last train being named for some random mostly-unknown historical figure.
 
Though it's not technically wrong to reference the Mississippi River with a name like Great River (and Amtrak has surprisingly little trackage along it) only about 1/3 of this CHI-STP routing is along the Mississippi. And the coloquial associations most people have of the mighty Mississippi and river lore are much farther downstream...St Louis, Memphis, Natchez, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, etc. It would kind of be like naming a rail line between Syracuse and Watertown the Emprie State Limited. It's not...wrong...but it's not really what most people would think for that name.
The Mississippi River this far north is anything but a Great River. It is a comparatively a small river, little more than a creek to those who live along the true Great Mississippi. The dividing point between the Upper River and the Lower River is the point where the Upper Mississippi River and the Ohio River meet at Cairo, Illinois. (By the way, they call it Ka ro, like Karo Syrup, not Kai ro like the city in Egypt.) Since about 2/3 of the water volume is from the Ohio River and only 1/3 from the Upper Mississippi, the Upper River at best is barely more than a shadow of the Lower River. Then, once you get north of St. Louis where the Missouri River comes in, the river above that is only about half of what it is below that point.
 
Following the example of Northeast Regionals, maybe all regional service running North of Chicago should simply be called Northern Regional so that people can stop bellyaching about name. LOL 😁

That already happened: the LaSalle, Marquette, Nicollet, and Radisson (maybe one or two more names I can't remember?) lost their names in favor of generic Hiawatha Service. And the Abraham Lincoln, State House, and Ann Rutledge lost their names in favor of generic Lincoln Service.

I don't recall if it was exactly the same time as all the northeastern trains lost their names, but the same ballpark. I thought it was quite sad, really - though the midwest names didn't all have quite as much history behind them as a lot of the NEC names did.
 
That already happened: the LaSalle, Marquette, Nicollet, and Radisson (maybe one or two more names I can't remember?) lost their names in favor of generic Hiawatha Service. And the Abraham Lincoln, State House, and Ann Rutledge lost their names in favor of generic Lincoln Service.

I don't recall if it was exactly the same time as all the northeastern trains lost their names, but the same ballpark. I thought it was quite sad, really - though the midwest names didn't all have quite as much history behind them as a lot of the NEC names did.

The Lincoln Service is the most recent of the three examples you note. They changed in the mid-2000s, when service on the corridor was expanded to the current service level. The Hiawatha Service has been that way since the 90s at least.

The NEC went through a couple of phases. I don’t know when they lost their individual train names (other than the Twilight Shoreliner, which was also mid-2000s or so), but there was a period were Amtrak decided to brand some trains as Northeast Direct and some as Acela Regional. In theory, “Acela Regional” trains were supposed to get the refurbished Amfleets and reconfigured cafe cars that looked like the Acela Express cafes. In practice, the fleets were intermingled so much that there was no difference. Then in the early 2000s they all became Acela Regional, then just Regional, then Northeast Regional.
 
In the "golden age" of passenger trains, trains that had names were generally the ones that had a faster schedule and carried amenities such as diners and lounges. There were numerous unnamed coaches only trains. Then as train services were reduced as air and highway competition siphoned off traffic, the coaches only trains got eliminated and only the "name" trains survived although sometimes losing their amenities and even becoming coaches only. The names got taken over into Amtrak with some modifications so we arrive at the situation today where almost everything outside the NEC gets a name even if it is a 3 coach train with no cafe making all stops.
 
The Mississippi River this far north is anything but a Great River. It is a comparatively a small river, little more than a creek to those who live along the true Great Mississippi. The dividing point between the Upper River and the Lower River is the point where the Upper Mississippi River and the Ohio River meet at Cairo, Illinois. (By the way, they call it Ka ro, like Karo Syrup, not Kai ro like the city in Egypt.) Since about 2/3 of the water volume is from the Ohio River and only 1/3 from the Upper Mississippi, the Upper River at best is barely more than a shadow of the Lower River. Then, once you get north of St. Louis where the Missouri River comes in, the river above that is only about half of what it is below that point.

Looks pretty Great to me here... and we're not even to Lake Pepin yet at this spot:
 

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In the "golden age" of passenger trains, trains that had names were generally the ones that had a faster schedule and carried amenities such as diners and lounges. There were numerous unnamed coaches only trains. Then as train services were reduced as air and highway competition siphoned off traffic, the coaches only trains got eliminated and only the "name" trains survived although sometimes losing their amenities and even becoming coaches only. The names got taken over into Amtrak with some modifications so we arrive at the situation today where almost everything outside the NEC gets a name even if it is a 3 coach train with no cafe making all stops.
One argument for named trains is that it reduces the chance that employees or the public will come up with their own clever nickname. For example, when UP11/12 between Portland and Pocatello, formerly the Idahoan, lost its name. Employees later called it the "Pocatello Rocket."
 
Well, ehm, I have to say, the "leaks" trickling out and being retracted about this service are...honestly farcical at this point! All I can do is sit back and laugh, because if I don't laugh, I'd get too frustrated. I'm not even going to post more about the name until the official announcement finally happens. 😆 Unbeknownst to me (and to many others, apparently) the proposed Borealis name for this service was "retracted" in an email to the Wisconsin Association of Railroad Passengers (WisARP) only one day after it came out. Source: https://wisarp.wordpress.com/2024/02/29/its-still-called-tcmc-for-a-little-longer/

It's honestly beyond hilarious to me that there have been two officially-unofficial names out there for the TCMC that have both been pulled back! Given that THIS name is also apparently not it, I have to wonder if they're just going to (as many have advocated for here & elsewhere) just name it the Twin Cities Hiawatha and be done with it. And regardless, still, we wait, and wait...keeping my fingers crossed and not uncrossing them until I see photographic evidence of this service's first run!😆
 
And for younger people under 30/35, and specifically college students who are huge potential users of this service, the name Hiawatha has no real meaning. Not to say its a "bad" name at all, but I don't think it will make any difference. Honestly Borealis is a pretty memorable and unique name, which might even be an actively positive thing.
I would have thought that to most people who are not railfans, the name Hiawatha is primarily associated with the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if not with the Native American figure on who that poem is based.

I guess far fewer know it also is, or ever was, a famous train.
 
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The Mississippi River this far north is anything but a Great River. It is a comparatively a small river, little more than a creek to those who live along the true Great Mississippi. The dividing point between the Upper River and the Lower River is the point where the Upper Mississippi River and the Ohio River meet at Cairo, Illinois. (By the way, they call it Ka ro, like Karo Syrup, not Kai ro like the city in Egypt.) Since about 2/3 of the water volume is from the Ohio River and only 1/3 from the Upper Mississippi, the Upper River at best is barely more than a shadow of the Lower River. Then, once you get north of St. Louis where the Missouri River comes in, the river above that is only about half of what it is below that point.
I think many great rivers have a lot of mystique about them in popular perception, and this makes them "great" all the way upstream to the source. Explorers have gone to great lengths to find, for example, the source of the Nile. The sources of the Rhine and the Danube are major tourist attractions. But nobody cares about the sources or headwaters of their various tributaries, even if these collectively contribute far more water.

That said, apparently, the etymology of the word Mississippi does actually mean "great river".
 
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In the "golden age" of passenger trains, trains that had names were generally the ones that had a faster schedule and carried amenities such as diners and lounges. There were numerous unnamed coaches only trains.
Hence the famous lyrics ...

"Passing trains that have no name,
And freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobile"
 
I would have thought that to most people who are not railfans, the name Hiawatha is primarily associated with the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if not with the Native American figure on who that poem is based.

I guess far fewer know it also is, or ever was, a famous train.
Yeah, and the poem is based on some really outdated and probably incorrect ethnography regarding Ojibwe legends. I mean you can't blame Longfellow too much, as it was his sources that were faulty. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Hiawatha) Anyway, the real Hiawatha was from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Federation, so if the name "Hiawatha" is used for a train, it more properly applies to the Empire Service west of Albany.

The fact that 19th century railway robber barons appropriated the name incorrectly should be irrelevant for the purposes of naming the Twin Cities services, and, anyway, many potential customers might be offended at the cultural appropriation, especially because it's done incorrectly.
 
My GF is not a railfan. However, my conversations with her provide insight into how non-railfans look at Amtrak and train names. If everything is okay, then, "the train was on time". We frequently travel to St. Louis. When she books her trips she refuses to ride the Texas Eagle and is aware of its name and train number, because it was several hours late on some of the times we rode it together. I selected it because I liked having a roomette and a dining car. She did not enjoy those delays at all.
 
I would have thought that to most people who are not railfans, the name Hiawatha is primarily associated with the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if not with the Native American figure on who that poem is based.

I guess far fewer know it also is, or ever was, a famous train.
Yes, for most general adults, I am sure that would be the association, and that many fewer would have any idea about the train.

Speaking specifically about younger people...I don't believe the Longfellow poem has been mentioned/taught in schools or been a part of general culture (as it once was in the Upper Midwest especially) for awhile, or not nearly to the extent it once was. I mean, I'm close to 30 (ahh!) and when I was in early elementary school over 2 decades ago in MN, we sang a kid version of some of the poem set to music, but that was the only real mention of it; I was more familiar with it due to my grandma, who liked the poem.

Anyway! Back to waiting for the start of service announcement 😂
 
The fact that 19th century railway robber barons appropriated the name incorrectly should be irrelevant for the purposes of naming the Twin Cities services, and, anyway, many potential customers might be offended at the cultural appropriation, especially because it's done incorrectly.

Yes, and to be totally honest, due to the active Native American/Indigenous community in Minneapolis and Minnesota generally, it is fairly possible that, should the Hiawatha name be chosen for this service, there will be activism and unhappiness at some point--if not outright offense--around the name. As you said, it's an incorrectly appropriated name that would geographically be most appropriate in New York state! Ah well, not my problem if they use this name instead of Great River or Borealis, which are both fine names.
 
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