This depends entirely on how much Amtrak is charging for the use of the Horizons, which we don't know.
There were a bunch of high levels stored outside of St Louis at Gateway Rail Services, including the one parlor car that Amtrak sold. Wondering if those could be the cars, or if there are more elsewhere? If you google Gateway in East St Louis, you can see pictures of the cars on google earth or street view. I remember someone posting on a discussion board that they were able to tour a few of the cars several years ago, but the owners of the site have a pretty firm no railfan policy so visiting other than from a nearby overpass or streets is as close as you'll get. Otherwise, I've seen one car that is privately owned advertised a while back for sale, and I think a handful may have escaped to private ownership.
Please note that Amtrak and Iowa Pacific is a joint bid, not two separate bids. The North Carolina Piedmont model is mentioned by Ed Ellis, with Iowa Pacific playing the role of the State of North Carolina in this case, i.e. providing equipment and such, and perhaps even OBS. Not very clear on that detail in his statement.
Given the fact that Amtrak has a fixed formula to assign costs for state-supported services, how much leeway do they have to "bid." Given that they are charging Indiana $2.7 million for a year of Hoosier State operation based on the formula, are they really able to bid say $2.2 million? Wouldn't that tell Indiana and all other states that the formula is bogus, and throw all the state cost assessments out the window? It would seem that the "formula," leaned on by Amtrak to squeeze more funding out of the states. has kind of painted Amtrak into a corner with regard to putting together a competitive bid for states that consider looking elsewhere for an operator.
Or perhaps there are confidentiality clauses in those contracts that prevent details from being released until they at least have some kind of tentative agreement signed.
I think we all hope that the private operator would provide a daily service and the Cardinal would provide a second daily service; two a day is completely justifiable. But in reality, who knows what would happen.
The Cardinal's route definitely justifies twice-daily service, but the same can be said about a good portion of the system. The main problem the Cap, LSL, and Cardinal all face is that they can either be focused on connecting in Chicago from the west or connecting in Washington/New York to the east/south. It is hard to do both (the Cap can't connect with the Star SB, the LSL doesn't connect with anything SB, and neither does the Cardinal effectively connect with anything SB, perhaps excepting the bus link CVS-RVR). The Cap is the closest to doing it, but even there it is a bit of a kludge.
The eastbound Cardinal does connect to the southbound Crescent at CVS. There are people who take this connection. The northbound Crescent also provide a connection to the westbound Cardinal at CVS, although the layover is on the long side. But then given the schedule reliability of the eastbound Cardinal and northbound Crescent at CVS, the long layover provides a useful buffer. Sure, if you are starting in CHI, the CL connects to the Crescent at WAS, but if you are starting from IND, OH, WV and want to get to Charlotte NC or Atlanta, the CL doesn't work.
