Corridor service CHI-KCY

[johnny.menhennet]

"The Hummer" one of the first named passangers trains. Ran over-night between Chicago - Kansas City.

DMU are currently getting built for the US market.

I vote for the over-night opition with some early in the am stops in Illinois going east, and late in evening stops in Illinois going west. The best of all opitions.

Edit do to small keyboard large fingers

Well if you want that type of thing, then I think that the best solution would be an extension of the Heartland Flyer thing. If they chose the option to leave from FTW closer to 7am and get to KCY late, then it could run overnight into CHI arriving around 7:00am with some extensive padding, closer to the SL's time of 5:30 without any. Going the other way, you could depart CHI at 11pm, KCY departure at 7:00, and then run down to FTW. Yeah!

 

[Anderson]

Well, if you're going to talk KCY-DEN, you should seriously also talk about getting the Cardinal into STL and allowing a one-transfer connection there.

Likewise, I tend to like running this as a "back end" to the Heartland Chief (I think that was the proposed name for the FTW-OKC-KCY train), for several reasons:

1) You avoid a split on the Southwest Chief and a middle-of-the-night car transfer;

2) You get all of the cars into CHI for maintenance; and

3) You "double up" the frequency from Kansas into Chicago in the process.

I do think that a serious talk should be had about KCY-STL LD through car service in some form or another (again, either a Cardinal/National Limited option or with a section of the Chiefs going KCY-STL[-CHI?] to cover more city pairs. You would probably need state support of some kind for these sections, but it's something that should be worth an honest look.

Also, if you want to do KCY-CHI overnight...you may as well just run via STL. Even hitting there in the middle of the night, it would provide a 66/67-style service, and you'd avoid having absurd padding. Even sticking in a thick pad at STL and/or at KCY to avoid delay issues, I don't see why you couldn't have the train depart CHI at about 9 PM, hit Springfield at about 12-12:30 AM, hit STL about the same time as 66/67 is hitting NYP, and hit KCY sometime around 8-9 AM. Going the other way, you'd have a similar situation, with a 6 AM-ish departure from Springfield translating into a 9 AM-ish arrival in Chicago (and potentially allowing 300 to be re-slotted somewhere later in the day).

Yes, the times are awful for STL, but the markets you're aiming for are either the mid-IL markets heading to/from Chicago on the one hand, the mid-MO markets heading to/from KCY on the other, and the heading-to-Texas-or-elsewhere-far-away markets.

 

[johnny.menhennet]

Well, if you're going to talk KCY-DEN, you should seriously also talk about getting the Cardinal into STL and allowing a one-transfer connection there.

Likewise, I tend to like running this as a "back end" to the Heartland Chief (I think that was the proposed name for the FTW-OKC-KCY train), for several reasons:

1) You avoid a split on the Southwest Chief and a middle-of-the-night car transfer;

2) You get all of the cars into CHI for maintenance; and

3) You "double up" the frequency from Kansas into Chicago in the process.

I do think that a serious talk should be had about KCY-STL LD through car service in some form or another (again, either a Cardinal/National Limited option or with a section of the Chiefs going KCY-STL[-CHI?] to cover more city pairs. You would probably need state support of some kind for these sections, but it's something that should be worth an honest look.

Also, if you want to do KCY-CHI overnight...you may as well just run via STL. Even hitting there in the middle of the night, it would provide a 66/67-style service, and you'd avoid having absurd padding. Even sticking in a thick pad at STL and/or at KCY to avoid delay issues, I don't see why you couldn't have the train depart CHI at about 9 PM, hit Springfield at about 12-12:30 AM, hit STL about the same time as 66/67 is hitting NYP, and hit KCY sometime around 8-9 AM. Going the other way, you'd have a similar situation, with a 6 AM-ish departure from Springfield translating into a 9 AM-ish arrival in Chicago (and potentially allowing 300 to be re-slotted somewhere later in the day).

Yes, the times are awful for STL, but the markets you're aiming for are either the mid-IL markets heading to/from Chicago on the one hand, the mid-MO markets heading to/from KCY on the other, and the heading-to-Texas-or-elsewhere-far-away markets.

I like your 66/67-esque scheduling because it allows 300 to be re-slotted. I've always thought it a bad decision that three of the 5 northbound trains leave before 8:00 in the morning. I say add a second or third coach onto the TE and reschedule the 6:40 train or something else, because a midday run would be so nice, leaving more at 1pm. I still think the best plan we've come up with so far is to make an overnight service on this route, on the tail-end of the Heartland Chief, if that's what we'll call it. It would allow the cars to be serviced in Chicago, it would take some strain off of the ever-popular TE, and would give all of Kansas and Oklahoma a complete daytime schedule. Sounds great to me. Once we get Superliner 3's to supplement rather than replace older cars in the fleet, this would be a nice addition. But we definitely cannot put this at the top of the wish list, because if we were to say that this would be a nice service once more cars are available, we would have so many people with different "more important" suggestions.

 

[dlagrua]

What you are really hoping for is the restoration of the Floridian route as its impractical ending at Louisville. The Floridian served many major cities (even Orlando) and was still cut, but bad track conditions and perpetual lateness did play a role in its demise.

from wiki:

Originating in Chicago, the Floridian served Lafayette and Bloomington, Indiana; Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Decatur, Birmingham, Montgomery and Dothan, Alabama; and Thomasville, Valdosta and Waycross, Georgia. At Jacksonville, Florida, the train split to serve two different routes, one serving St. Petersburg, Florida via Orlando, and the other serving Miami via Ocala and Winter Haven. These two legs crossed each other near Lakeland, Florida.

As it now stands now there is no direct route from Chicago to Florida and no plans to restart service as such.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

The other routes are interesting, but i still think the best way is to go on the current SWC line or maybe a slight detour through Joliet. Amtrak could run a short train or a DMU, as I said previously.

It seems that nobody considered, or at least gave an opinion, about the DMU idea.

Nothing really to be said about DMUs because the Midwest (minus WI) has settled on bi-level corridor cars as the primary equipment fleet for the next 20-30 years. And WI will either mothball or sell the 2 Talgo trainsets at some point and get bi-levels to replace the Horizons in a post-Gov. Walker era. If you think that a KCY-CHI corridor service over the SWC route will only get enough business over the first decade of operation to fill a 2-3 DMU car consist, why add the corridor service?

I don't think there's only enough pax for 2-3 cars, it's some of you that say there isn't enough demand. I'm not saying it was you, though. Personally I think the best would be three bi-levels one of which would have a cafe on the lower level. Checked baggage could be put on the lower level but it's not very important. A fourth one could be added if demand is high enough. I think Amtrak can dig up six to eight bi-levels or maybe extra Horizons. The problem is with the locomotives.

"The Hummer" one of the first named passangers trains. Ran over-night between Chicago - Kansas City.

DMU are currently getting built for the US market.

I vote for the over-night opition with some early in the am stops in Illinois going east, and late in evening stops in Illinois going west. The best of all opitions.

Edit do to small keyboard large fingers

Well if you want that type of thing, then I think that the best solution would be an extension of the Heartland Flyer thing. If they chose the option to leave from FTW closer to 7am and get to KCY late, then it could run overnight into CHI arriving around 7:00am with some extensive padding, closer to the SL's time of 5:30 without any. Going the other way, you could depart CHI at 11pm, KCY departure at 7:00, and then run down to FTW. Yeah!

Now, of course another LD down the route would be really great, especially if it ran down to SAS and/or HOU. But since the federal money isn't enough and the states don't want to support an LD, I don't see it happening very soon. It would need too much federal support.