#Wisconsin Amtrak

[actualpanda]

Amtrak and Logistics (The Hiawatha Extension to Eau Claire, WI)

Ever since the plan came out that the state of Wisconsin wanted to connect Eau Claire and Madison to Chicago by way of an extension to the Hiawatha Service, I've been a little...cautious. It's something I would have absolutely loved to have when I was going to college, but unfortunately, there are some rather significant issues that I can see.

Why is this? What are these issues? I'm glad you asked.

The problem is the Union Pacific Railroad. They purchased the Chicago and North Western Railroad back in 1995, which had the previous right of ways through northwestern WI from Chicago to Minneapolis. Since they purchased that railroad, they haven't done a whole lot of infrastructure improvements on the former CNW lines - in fact, if it weren't for the frac sand boom in Wisconsin in the early 2010s (which is not good in other aspects), they'd have ignored improving anything along the Wyeville Subdivision.

What is the Wyeville Subdivision? It's the Union Pacific's main route that runs from Wyeville, WI, up to Altoona, WI. This line is single tracked for much of its route and it's not well-traveled by freight trains. UP has a separate route that runs well to the south that most of its transcontinental traffic runs on (an East-West line through central Nebraska). The Wyeville Subdivision runs from Wyeville to Valley Junction, then to Warrens, Millston, Black River Falls, and then on to Merrillan. North of Black River Falls, the Wyeville Subdivision crosses the Black River, then runs through to Merrillan, where it crosses a Canadian National line that runs east to west.

From Merrillan, this line continues on to Humbird, before meandering to the north and west to Fairchild, then northwest to Augusta, and finally over Fall Creek and Altoona. This is absolutely gorgeous country, and eventually this line ends in Eau Claire. But why is this an issue?

Union Pacific holds the right of way for this entire route.

The Union Pacific railroad doesn't play well with Amtrak and hasn't for a long time - for one example, the Portland-bound Empire Builder runs along the Washington side of the Columbia River, and that's likely because Union Pacific owns the tracks on the Oregon side. The current route of the Builder is on the Washington side, even though Hood River and The Dalles are decently sized population centers, and there's a train bridge that it would be possible to use if the Builder was routed on the Oregon side of the Columbia.

But neither Hood River nor The Dalles have Amtrak service. The Union Pacific railroad, while it technically should make allowances for its trains to be sidelined for Amtrak service, often chooses not to allow the passenger trains the right of passage.

Delays just seem to happen on UP tracks for Amtrak trains at an absurd rate (though they can happen anywhere, the former Canadian Pacific (now CPKC) and BNSF grade much more positively). Where's that coming from? Amtrak's resource on freight delays, and the chief violators from Class 1 Railroads (The Big Six): https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance

If you had to choose a host railroad to work with, you wouldn't pick the Union Pacific...

Back to the problem with connecting Eau Claire to the current mainline - the current mainline of the CPKC (Canadian Pacific - Kansas City) doesn't cleanly connect to Eau Claire anywhere. You have to leave CPKC tracks to jump onto the Union Pacific line somewhere, as Union Pacific is the only railroad with through access to Eau Claire.

There's a solution! Or is there?

At Camp Douglas, a line connected to Wyeville. I use the past tense because the connection through Wyeville, which should be a relatively clean X indicating a diamond, is instead a complete disaster.

Union Pacific wouldn't...would they?

In an ideal world, the Union Pacific would just run clean through Wyeville. It doesn't. Union Pacific removed the diamond that once existed at Wyeville and has a jumbled mass (diamonds are expensive to maintain, but still...a very shortsighted move). Any train connecting to the Union Pacific at Wyeville with the intent to go to Eau Claire would have to run through Wyeville, back up onto the Adams Subdivision line, then jump back onto the Wyeville Subdivision.

This isn't practical with this line in its current condition. The Union Pacific used the line from Camp Douglas to Wyeville to store boxcars and excess freight cars in the past, but this isn't a line that sees regular traffic. For Amtrak to use it, it would require heavy, heavy maintenance of way to be conducted. Union Pacific has never met a job it didn't threaten to lay off, so that'd be something...

In addition, six of the rail crossings from Camp Douglas to Wyeville would require upgrades - not a single one of them has crossing gates; they're just advisory signposts and I don't think that entire route even has wigwag signals. Not great when you have a train that would have to make at least 60 mph through this territory (which also probably necessitate an upgrade from its current status of Dark Territory).

Lastly, the plan I've seen indicates that there's to be an Amtrak Station in Camp Douglas. But this is a different problem:

Uh oh...

The diverging track off the CPKC Mainline (from bottom right to the left of the image) that would serve Camp Douglas to Wyeville isn't an ideal place to put a station. Curves can work to put a station, but they're not perfect, and the CPKC rail line through Camp Douglas is a busy creature - while CPKC has graded much more favorably than the Union Pacific on the delays caused by freight graph above, significant work would be required so that any train stopping here wouldn't block the CPKC main line.

Do you have a plan, an alternative plan? THEN NAME THE STATION!

I do have a plan, as it turns out.

The station at Camp Douglas needs to be shelved from the equation. I know, I know, boo, but really, there's not many places to put it. What's my solution?

Tada!

Just down the line from Camp Douglas, which Amtrak currently flies through, is the City of Tomah, which has an existing Amtrak station. Beyond Tomah is Tunnel City - this is where the Union Pacific line from Wyeville and the CPKC meet up to knife their way through the low hills of the Driftless Region. At Tunnel City, the train can back into the Union Pacific line and proceed east to Wyeville, and once at Wyeville, get switched onto the mainline to Eau Claire.

But you just said...

I know what I just stated. I just proposed a complicated double backing maneuver, going from forwards to backwards to forwards again. Unfortunately, I have 0 faith in Union Pacific to do something as simple as routine trackside maintenance along their own spur line or install a diamond at Wyeville. Unless they're forced to do it, they probably won't do it!

And to make matters worse, once you leave the CPKC route and you're on the Union Pacific...good luck. You're at their mercy.

I'm sorry, that's their lack of mercy.

[makesomethingawfuleveryday]

Dune 2 hit streaming the same day the Borealis line between Chicago and St. Paul launched. Coincidence? I think not.

[thehottesttrains]

WE WIN THESE!!!!! LETS GOOOOO!!!!

[aryburn-trains]

Amtrak-Disney's "A Christmas Carol" Train by Dave Markvart Via Flickr: Movie promo train, in conjunction with Amtrak, enroute from the Twin Cities to Chicago passes through Watertown, WI on CP Rail. July 20, 2009

[guerrerense]

Amtrak; Milwaukee WI; 6/17/24 por Steve Barry Por Flickr: Amtrak Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 17, 2024 Amtrak Midwest SC-44 4632 leads a Chicago-bound train through Milwaukee just seconds into its trip.

[wausaupilot]

Amtrak to start new Chicago-Twin Cities service through Wisconsin later this month

In the first major expansion of passenger train service in Wisconsin in more than a decade, Amtrak is adding a second train from Chicago to Minnesota’s Twin Cities later this month.

by Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner May 7, 2024 In the first major expansion of passenger train service in Wisconsin in more than a decade, Amtrak is adding a second train from Chicago to Minnesota’s Twin Cities later this month. The new Borealis service, which will start Tuesday, May 21, will give travelers a second choice of trains daily between the two metro areas. It’s the first of what could be…

[sohannabarberaesque]

"And you wonder why Amtrak's new Chicago-Twin Cities train was named Borealis, to begin with. Even when it stops at Wisconsin Dells for the waterpark trade. Were they hoping to make the whole all the more boring, to begin with?"

--Crazy Claws

[cheeseheadmedia]

Amtrak 340 by Brian Hechel Via Flickr: Amtrak 340, one of the Hiawatha Service trains, moments earlier performed its station stop in Sturtevant, WI and in just over an hour will be arriving in Chicago where the crew will switch ends and run the same route back to Milwaukee.

[transit-fag]

Rating Swing States based off their transit infrastructure

Pennsylvania - Septa + Pittsburgh T + Keystone Service

North Carolina - really good amtrak + Lynx in Charlotte

Arizona - Valley Metro + Tempe Streetcar

Georgia - MARTA

Wisconsin - Borealis + Hiawatha + Hop streetcar

Michigan - 3 amtrak routes and Q-Line Streetcar

Nevada - the Las Vegas Monorail and that's it

[marimo-o]

how do i givr the folks on the amtrak train i got on by accident 50$ apiece for not being mean and letting me off at the next station instead of in wisconsin

[rustbeltjessie]

Obligatory train selfie.

(October 5 // on the Amtrak Hiawatha line, somewhere in southeastern Wisconsin)

[ofravensflight]

The ride begins

To Wisconsin we are bound! Train ho!

@lost-estradiographer @a-shard-of-ace @amtrak-official

[razorsadness]

Back at Union Station, I looked at the Amtrak departures board, just so I knew exactly what gate my train would be departing from. But of course I saw all the rest of that night’s departures, and had that desire I always have in a train station—that desire to hop on a different train than the one I’m supposed to board, to go somewhere else. I noticed that the City of New Orleans was set to depart from a different track at the same time the Hiawatha Line would be taking me back to Wisconsin, and that was the one I most wished I could ride.

Of course I couldn’t, so I went to get a beer at the railroad station bar—a God Damn Pigeon Porter from Spiteful Brewing. I watched all the conductors & the porters (& I’m all outta quarters…) & the people—Japanese tourists & high school kids & Amish families & punk rockers—walk by. I got out my notebook & wrote, wrote a tanka, wrote notes about my day, drank my beer. The bar was playing all these ‘90s sadboy songs, and I suppose it was inevitable that I got a bit melancholy. About to leave the city of my heart, and who knew when I’d be back again; had seen some old friends and old flames oh, so briefly, and who knew when I’d see them again; and all the sad, nostalgic songs. Emotional masochist that I am, I pulled out one of the zines I’d picked up at MWPZF—Red’s grief zine. Reading the raw explorations of loss, and some of them about Jack Terricloth—well, I began to cry.

Then I heard someone say: “Hey, sister, you alright?” I looked around, not sure who was speaking or if they were talking to me, and also, not again, sister? Oh shit, they were talking to me—but it wasn’t a fascist-looking religious freak, it was a gorgeous hippie woman. I’d noticed her & her traveling companions when I first sat down at the bar, because they were the most interesting characters there. One of her companions noticed my hesitancy in responding, must have clocked my genderqueerness, said: “Or…brother? Sister or brother, it’s all good.” It wasn’t like getting ma’am-sirred, it was instead this affirmation that I could be both sister and brother and it was cool. I wiped my eyes and smiled. “Come sit with us,” the woman said, “if you want to.” So I did.

I don’t always like hippies, but these cats seemed cool. First of all, they obviously weren’t the type of hippies that are strangely hung up on regressive gender roles. Secondly, they were authentic weirdos. The woman, S., had on a very Janis Joplin-esque dress and long vest, yards of beads, tall boots, a knit cap from which her dark hair spilled out. One of the guys, D., the one who’d called me brother, was wearing a black hat and a black leather jacket with fringe hanging from the sleeves, and had an old camera around his neck. The other guy, F., had a scruffy reddish beard and a long thin braid running down his back and was wearing a sailor’s cap. The way they interacted with each other, the way they touched one another, I got the feeling they were some kind of polycule, though I couldn’t figure out in what permutation and anyway, it was none of my business.

We all just started talking, in that way where you can be more open with people whom you’ve only just met and will most likely never see again than you can be with even your closest friends. (Well, mostly S. and D. and I talked; F. was more of a listener.) I told them a bit about why I’d been crying, S. told me about a friend of theirs who’d recently died. We talked loss and grief. D. asked if he could take my picture; said he always took pictures of the people he met on his travels. I said yes, of course, and smiled sadly; sadly smiling in the railroad station barlight, I don’t know if there could be a more perfect situation for a portrait of me. I noticed that his camera was a Miranda Sensomat, just like the one I used to have during my wannabe-photographer days. We talked photography for a bit. They asked if I wanted to go outside and get high with them; I said I’d go but declined the weed, as I knew it would just make me anxious at that point. So we all gathered up our luggage and hauled it outside, sat by the river in the deepening dusk. They got stoned & I smoked a cigarette. I talked about how sad I was to be leaving Chicago, S. said: “I know what you mean, it’s one of my favorite cities, too.” S. asked where I was headed, I said: “Oh, just Wisconsin.” They were about to board the City of New Orleans. I started humming the Arlo Guthrie song, because I’m incapable of not thinking of that song when I think of that train. F. got his guitar out of its case and started playing along, and S. sang, her voice deep and warm: Riding on the City of New Orleans, Illinois Central, Monday morning rail. D. and I joined in, soon all of us were singing: Good mornin’ America, how are ya? Don’t ya know me? I’m your native son. When that song ended, S. went into another: Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train… And I joined in, because how could I not? Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

After our jamboree, we parted ways. I went to rustle up some grub, ended up with the driest, blandest sandwich ever. Sat in the food court, listened to everyone around me chattering, bits of conversations overlapping and interrupted by the pre-recorded voiceover. “Now boarding, Track 7, Now boarding, Track 8.” Now I’m waitin for the train to take me home / I’m tired and it’s gettin pretty late / I’m sittin here on a wooden bench / They’re boardin track seven, track eight. I went outside for one last cigarette, one last look at the river, all the lights coming on in the buildings along the river, lights shining on the river. Chicago, city of light. A homeless man walked over to me, asked if I could spare a smoke. I had one left in the pack, aside from the one I was smoking, and I gave it to him, lit it for him. “That’ll do,” he nodded, smiled. “That’ll do.” He sat down near me and started telling me a bit about his life, how he was once a blues musician—making the second time in my life when I befriended a homeless Chicagoan who was once a blues musician—and I’m a friend to the friendless, not that I chose it. If I had, well then, who knows? Then back inside for one more quick beer before I had to board the train; Goose Island’s 312, this time.

[from a journal entry, October 30, 2022]

[guerrerense]

Over and Under Wisconsin por Nomad of Mid-America Por Flickr: The Milwaukee Road oriented its Milwaukee-Twin Cities mainline with a general northwesterly heading across Wisconsin until it hit the foreboding town of Tunnel City, where it made a hard left and punched through 1,330(ish) feet of Driftless rock to follow the easy contour of the La Crosse River on the other side down into the Mississippi River Valley. The Tunnel City tunnel--in its 2nd incarnation at this location--was bored in 1874 and subsequently modified and modernized, passed down through the Milwaukee's numerous business transactions to the Soo Line and later Canadian Pacific, where it remains a vital asset on CPKC's international mainline connecting Chicago, the Twin Cities, and Canada. #149, with its autos and intermodal from Chicago's Bensenville Yard to the Vancouver area, is the hottest freight train on the railroad, but its westward progress on this occasion has been hampered by numerous Amtrak meets and conservative dispatching. With evening shadow growing ever longer, the train finally has clear signals advancing its expedited journey and is finally back to making time as the industrious beaver shielding the nose on the historically painted lead locomotive guides 149 out of the tunnel's west portal and bends toward La Crosse.

[arqueete]

One of my resolutions this year is to be more confident and comfortable with figuring out public transit and I've generally been itching to take some sort of solo trip. So I'm proud that yesterday I took a little trip down to Chicago by myself!

Things really did not go as expected--I tried to take an early (Amtrak) train down but it sold out before I got tickets so I had to leave later than I wanted, a water main break here in downtown Milwaukee shut down the streetcar I usually take to the train station so I pivoted to a bus, then the train was delayed by over half an hour and threw off the timing of buses and things I planned for in Chicago... eventually I made it to the Museum of Science and Industry and I had, well, a whole one hour to walk around before having to turn around and head back home. But I saw the temporary Mold-A-Rama exhibit I wanted to see (they're machines at museums and zoos mostly around Illinois/Wisconsin that make souvenir injection molded plastic figurines on demand, so the exhibit is about how they work and they have machines on display--I had one make me a robot) as well as the airplane.

So mostly it ended up being an exercise in being a patient and flexible traveler but it made me feel accomplished and it was a beautiful day for walking around. Me ten years ago couldn't have imagined riding city buses alone in another city and not even feeling particularly anxious about it.

[bigtimesinsmallspaces]

Post #3: The Empire Builder

[Note: When I said WiFi and phone service was limited on the train I think I was underestimating the problem. I will make an effort to get out shorter posts more frequently.]

It was pretty exciting to walk into Chicago’s Union Station after viewing the eclipse, and race to board The Empire Builder, one of Amtrak’s flagship cross country trains, going through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and ending in Oregon. PG and I are both experienced train riders but we have primarily ridden on Northeast Corridor trains. The long distance trains are very different. We were seated together in a coach car right next to the Observation and Cafe car— a nice place to be as we wound our way for the next thirty hours through Lewis and Clark territory and across the Great Plains, making our way toward Glacier National Park for our first 24 hour respite stop. (Suffice it to say we were going to be in need of one.)

The sun rose gloriously over the plains and I had time (actually quite a bit of time) to think about Laura Ingles Wilder and consider how amazing it was that Pa was able to make his way across the terrain in a covered wagon. I myself was challenged to make it another night across the Great Plains in coach. As much as I love the train I admit I was encouraged to know that by Tuesday nightfall we would be heading into our stop at Whitefish, Montana for 24 hours of not-train food, a cushy bed, and a ground that wasn’t swaying, not to mention the beauty of mountains and snow. Well the train was a little late pulling into beautiful Whitefish, but after thirty hours, who’s counting.

[The attached photos show: sunrise over the plains, Minot ND train stop, more of the Plains, the Whitefish Railway Station]