Wasn't there a rumor that the old Amtrak Midway station was going to become a maintenance base for the second Chicago-St. Paul train, and perhaps for minor servicing on the Empire Builder if needed?
I too had heard a rumor as such about returning restoring the Midway depot location but as I had noted before -
Amtrak to move its operation to the Midway depot location.
This location has been brought up time and time again to be used again as a joint operation between
the Twin Cities replacing SPUD & Target Field creating one uniform railroad transportation center.
Problem here location location location out in between the cities in a Commercial Rail freight yard.
Zoom map link out and follow the tracks to see this or use this link:
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9629944,-93.1845059,424m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
That dark rectangular shape building in the center of the link is the old Midway depot.
No hotels - no night entertainment - limited restaurants - a good block walk to the existing
Green Line lite rail (in the winter or weather related issues who wants to put up with that !)
YES would be a good location for train maintenance (by contract with Commercial Rail which
has its own maintenance facility and yard).
But any further development of additional tracks and platforms in a very confined space is
a significant issue for multiple trains (note the north bound exit from the depot runs thru
a yard with some 33 tracks and the south bound all exiting onto 1 single track to merge
with the former Short Line route to SPUD - yet Amtrak trains 7 & 8 transit thru this daily
with speed reduction transferring off the BNSF tracks to Commercial Rail and onto CP.
The tracks are not as they were back in the 30s 40s 50s.
Side note the Commercial Rail yard is where the Private rail cars are dis/connected to the
Amtrak 7 & 8 by a Commercial Rail crew - usually not much of a delay issue.