Hoosier State Discussion (both Amtrak and Iowa Pacific)

Would make sense to build a newer and efficient shop closer to CHI. Sale Beech.

mtuandrew wrote:I think someone needs to send a copy of Amtrak’s fleet plan to Indianapolis, with the part about “excess heavy rebuild capacity” and “facility rationalization” bolded. By no means am I advocating for Beech Grove to close, but Amtrak has other facilities in which it could maintain Horizons, Superliners and Viewliners. It would be annoying but they could even ship them all out to Wilmington and Bear, until the sale of Beech provided enough money to buy a smaller, newer facility *cough N-S Rochelle* in a much friendlier state nearer an Amtrak hub.

Since Superliners don't clear Baltimore and New York, sending them to Delaware is a little more difficult. They'd either need a convoluted series of Amtrak moves or hand off to a freight railroad for part of the journey. I may be missing a route with compatible clearances (Superliners clear Plate F, right?) and I think they can clear the Philly area but not 30th Street Station itself?

• Return on the Capitol Limited to Pittsburgh and then haul them on the end of the Pennsylvanian and drop off at Harrisburg. Amtrak then runs a separate train to "avoid 30th street." Looking at OpenRailwayMap I think they still need a brief run on CSX to avoid the station
• Have NS haul them from Harrisburg over the Port Road.
• Capitol Limited then hand off to CSX at Washington and run them through the Howard Street Tunnel
• Lake Shore Limited and then hand off to CSX at Albany/Selkirk and let CSX get them to Delaware on the back of Q409 or Q439.

frequentflyer wrote:Would make sense to build a newer and efficient shop closer to CHI. Sale Beech.

For something to be sold one needs a willing buyer. Does anyone else need a shop with Beech Grove's capabilities in Indianapolis?

Without a sale Amtrak would need to deal with the cost of shutting it down - remediating any long term effects to the property.
Building a new shop would not be cheap. It is probably less expensive to simply keep Beech Grove running.
(That would not preclude any political decision to shutter Beech Grove as some punitive measure against Indiana. But such punitive decisions can cost the one inflicting the punishment.)

Any solution that requires separate non-passenger moves might as well be done to Beech Grove.

Can we please drop the fake outrage and idealism for a few?

1. The Hoosier was a dog of a train from day one. Terrible schedule, terrible track, terrible route. Nothing about it made sense. A one-day trip to Indy was automatically a three day affair because of the schedule. It reminds me of travel by train in Argentina with the stick rail and slow going, except the trains here are 25 years older.
2. The state of Indiana has a very vibrant passenger service in the South Shore so let's cut the "Indiana doesn't care about trains". The state of Mike Pence (supposedly a super mean bad guy) has a far better passenger train operation than most. As of right now, Metra and NJT are facing dire personnel, maintenance, and infrastructure issues. NJT cannot even figure out how to run the ACL, an operation quite similar to the South Shore.
3. The concept of strong-arming the state by closing Beech Grove is a joke. It is less realistic than landing a man on Uranus. You will not find any heavy back shops between here and aforementioned gaseous planet that is available for the taking. They are all in full operation or completely changed to a point where it would take untold millions to equip with new cranes, droptables, transfer table, etc... The tiny new Seattle shop cost $28m and two years just to build (nevermind the years of budget requests, etc...) are we really going to pretend this is viable?
4. Indiana is flush with skilled trade jobs right now. Someone would buy that building in a heartbeat and hire those people.
5. We tried a private operator a few years back. I rode the train. There were pros and cons, but Amtrak fought the whole concept tooth and nail every day. Why are we now on the side of a company that killed a private operator that was good for passengers and railfans?

At the end of the day, Indiana has tried a lot of different options but the problems remain the same.

justalurker66 wrote:Just make the Cardinal run seven days a week.

And..... there it is! I was waiting for that!

Does the demand support 7 days, though? It's the same issue with the Sunset.

What about a truncated route? Is there any other type of passenger rail (i.e. commuter) closer in to Chicago? Rensselaer is 75m out; Dyer 29.

And Tad, please leave my anus out of it LOL.

All of Tad's points are well taken.

Jeff Smith wrote:

justalurker66 wrote:Just make the Cardinal run seven days a week.

Does the demand support 7 days, though? It's the same issue with the Sunset.

Well it might if the schedule favored IND and CIN rather than serving CIN during the graveyard shift and IND close to 6am and midnight.

The Sunset has the same problems, it leaves San Antonio in the middle of the night and arrives in Los Angeles before 6am.

WhartonAndNorthern wrote: Since Superliners don't clear Baltimore and New York, sending them to Delaware is a little more difficult. They'd either need a convoluted series of Amtrak moves or hand off to a freight railroad for part of the journey. I may be missing a route with compatible clearances (Superliners clear Plate F, right?) and I think they can clear the Philly area but not 30th Street Station itself?

• Return on the Capitol Limited to Pittsburgh and then haul them on the end of the Pennsylvanian and drop off at Harrisburg. Amtrak then runs a separate train to "avoid 30th street." Looking at OpenRailwayMap I think they still need a brief run on CSX to avoid the station
• Have NS haul them from Harrisburg over the Port Road.
• Capitol Limited then hand off to CSX at Washington and run them through the Howard Street Tunnel
• Lake Shore Limited and then hand off to CSX at Albany/Selkirk and let CSX get them to Delaware on the back of Q409 or Q439.

If I recall, they can run on #1 track at 30th Street only. That "brief run over CSX" is via the High Line, which is no longer connected to Amtrak at the east end, ZOO. If push really, really came to shove and the pigs flew, they could always go down the Port Road with an NS Pilot and over the north leg of the wye at Perryville to head North up the NEC.

Jeff Smith wrote:

justalurker66 wrote:Just make the Cardinal run seven days a week.

And..... there it is! I was waiting for that!

Just looking for ways the train could stay running daily to Indy without state support. Less than 750 miles is less than 750 miles.

I suppose we should be happy that the Capital Limited is 780 miles (703 miles by road).

Question: I understand that trains under 750 miles must have state support. Is there a minimum in the statute? Or does Amtrak get to decide how much state support is needed for each route?

Tad: true, it would be a strong-arm move against Indiana, one that the aforementioned Pence-wise pound-foolish VP would make sure worked best for Indiana. But considering Indiana has been strong-arming Amtrak, it seems fair that Anderson would consider it. Again, I’m not advocating for closing or selling Beech, it would be more damage to Amtrak than to Indiana for many reasons, I’m just concerned someone else is.

Also, the South Shore is a fine operation - and the only operating authority in the state. That says a lot about the priorities of the northern tier of counties in how they see fit to invest their share of local, state and Federal monies. It suggests other things about the rest of the state.

It would be a big pain to pull Superliners to Bear or Wilmington, and would be cutting off Amtrak’s own nose to spite Indiana. There’s also an open question of how well either Wilmington or Bear would be able to care for either Superliners or P42s. However, as far as I can tell Superliners are designed to clear Plate F. Anywhere a gallery car or MP36 can fit, a Superliner ought to as well. Again, this is an educated opinion, I do not have access to Amtrak’s height restriction maps.

Anyway, I’ve said my piece on that. I’d far rather see Amtrak and Indiana come to a more robust agreement to make the Hoosier State a reasonable mode of transportation than have Amtrak take a nuclear option like this.

Why does selling Beech have to mean no midwest yard? How about looking for a facility elsewhere... for instance has Nippon sold their Rochelle factory yet? (EDIT: oops noticed @mtuandrew made the same point)

dowlingm wrote:Why does selling Beech have to mean no midwest yard? How about looking for a facility elsewhere... for instance has Nippon sold their Rochelle factory yet? (EDIT: oops noticed @mtuandrew made the same point)

Great minds, Mr. Dowling

I’m not sure if N-S Rochelle is for sale, or if it is, if it’s more than an empty shell with a few overhead cranes. It’s certain that any structure would need both extensive rebuilding, extensive supply, and extensive staff training to begin to approach the capabilities of Beech, which for all its locational shortcomings is perhaps one of the world’s most capable heavy maintenance shops for passenger equipment. Certainly the best on this continent. So yes, it would be a self-defeating idea for Amtrak to sell it and have to start over.

So, note to One Mass: don’t try to use that as leverage against Indiana or as cost savings. I’d rather you threaten to make the Cardinal a 1x/weekly train than have you close or sell Beech Grove!

Tadman, Amtrak apparently didn't like the Iowa Pacific arrangement, and I heard claims that the Amtrak inspectors were being especially picky with the Iowa Pacific cars and locomotives, but as far as I know Iowa Pacific stopped running the Hoosier State because Iowa Pacific went bankrupt, not because Amtrak killed the operation. I rode it round trip once from Crawfordsville to Chicago and enjoyed it. I was actually thinking that the short-haul with real diner model might actually work, because the food was good enough to be an attraction yet the crew only had to be paid for ten or so more or less daytime hours and restocking was easy. Also business class sat in the dome diner so the dome level was a revenue space. I don't know if Iowa Pacific was making money on the deal or not.

I don't know that wanting my state to keep subsidizing my closest train is exactly being on Amtrak's side, anyway. It seems to be the PRIAA 750-mile requirement was as clever a way to hurt Amtrak as anyone ever came up with, because it basically prohibits Amtrak from using its operating subsidy for the routes that are most likely to attract a lot of riders who don't care about trains or views. Combine that with continuing attacks on the long-distance trains and it basically says Amtrak shouldn't have a system of trains, but should just be a market-price contractor for states. But in that case why have a federal entity or a federal subsidy at all? And yet we've mostly fallen in line with it, criticizing states for not wanting to subsidize trains that didn't require state subsidies a decade ago. Indiana's a great example, because some 2- or 3-state routes that make sense from a national perspective don't make sense based on the states' interests: Chicago-Indy, for example.

And, Tadman, I think you're part right, part wrong about Indiana and rail. I think you're more right than the general assumption here. Still, from here in Terre Haute, Indiana looks, if not anti-rail, at least uninterested in passenger trains anywhere other than the South Shore Line. But I don't think that's all because of a particular anti-rail bias. Pretty much everyplace in the US figures that expanding highways is a necessity while passenger trains are a frill; Indiana's not that different. What's different about the South Shore? It lets a lot of people live in Indiana and work in Illinois--good for property values, grocery stores, etc., up in those Chicago suburbs, and maybe a little bit good for income tax (as I recall from when my wife worked in Illinois, our income tax is a littler higher than theirs, so those commuters end up paying a little bit of Indiana tax, too. Most of the traffic on the Hoosier State was people from Indiana going to Chicago for the day (or longer). A day-trip from Chicago to Indiana on the Hoosier State is impossible. Maybe a few people rode down and stayed in a hotel for a convention or a sporting event, but that wasn't the main traffic as far as I could see when I rode. Why should Indiana subsidize a train that mostly helps Hoosiers spend money in Illinois? Illinois, on the other hand, subsidizes trains that not only help people move around Illinois, but also help Hoosiers visit Chicago (I use the Illinois trains much more than the Hoosier State, and I'm pretty sure that the state makes back the whole ticket subsidy in hotel and restaurant and sales taxes, without even considering the economic impact of my stays.

The Indiana government has not chosen to try to get a different schedule that would bring people from Chicago (where there are tens of thousands of people with money and without cars and/or without the desire to drive much) for days or weekends in the station towns. You could get people for a day in Lafayette. With faster trains and/or a couple pair of trains a day you could get people for a couple days in Indy. Downtown Indy is compact enough to be walkable and interesting enough to be worth the visit -- sports and concerts, but also several museums, botanic garden, and zoo in walking distance of the major downtown convention sites and the sports venues. I don't get the sense that the government (I should say the dominant party in the government) has thought much about what would bring in car-free visitors and whether better train service might help to tap the huge Chicago population.

Mike Pence kept the Hoosier State going. I disagree with him on almost every other cultural and political issue but he was apparently more open to passenger train subsidies than Governor Holcomb, who killed the funding in this budget.

Another multi-state route that might make sense based on where people live along the route but which no state involved would want to fund? St. Louis-Effingham-Terre Haute-Greencastle-Indy (and maybe pts east to Columbus). MO wouldn't pay for a train that was hardly in MO at all. IL wouldn't pay for a train that skipped all it's major cities. Indiana might pay for a train through Indy but there's not enough population in TH and Greencastle to support the train (and TH is probably too far out for a commuter-type service to Indy, either).

Arborwayfan wrote:......but as far as I know Iowa Pacific stopped running the Hoosier State because Iowa Pacific went bankrupt, not because Amtrak killed the operation.

Bankrupt? News to me. "Shakey"? Much evidence to support that.

At another topic I reported how during '13, I was going to do a Northbound PRJ joyride, flying to NO same day (NO is simply a "NO" to me). How it ended with both United and PRJ "one click away", I first clicked PRJ and suddenly found they annulled that trip. That would have ended up an "airfan joyride" - and not exactly at Advance Purchase rates.

I also considered a CHI-LAF-CHI overnight joyride, but too often I learned the Ellis Hoosier State was departing from Canal Street and not Track 18 (busteetoot). Also, with major brand hotels requiring not less than 24hr CX, that could have been costly for nothing.

Arborwayfan wrote:Tadman, Amtrak apparently didn't like the Iowa Pacific arrangement, and I heard claims that the Amtrak inspectors were being especially picky with the Iowa Pacific cars and locomotives, but as far as I know Iowa Pacific stopped running the Hoosier State because Iowa Pacific went bankrupt, not because Amtrak killed the operation.

I'll respect Mr Norman by not saying "bankrupt" but I will clarify that their financial difficulties came from their other operations, not the Hoosier State. Amtrak did their best to make sure that Iowa Pacific were not swimming in profit - and their trains became the most inspected passenger train per mile of travel in the system. But Iowa Pacific was making it work and providing better service to passengers than Amtrak.

The last minute "lets improve service" done by Amtrak before Iowa Pacific took over and the temporary provision of a dome the month after service returned to Amtrak were ways of Amtrak to say "see, we can provide this service too". Except they didn't until they were pushed to improve service by having competition.

Arborwayfan wrote:It seems to be the PRIAA 750-mile requirement was as clever a way to hurt Amtrak as anyone ever came up with, because it basically prohibits Amtrak from using its operating subsidy for the routes that are most likely to attract a lot of riders who don't care about trains or views.

750 miles is too long. The Capital Limited would require state subsidies if it ran a slightly shorter route (currently 780 miles by rail - 703 miles by road). A lower number wouldn't help the Hoosier State unless it was much lower.

Arborwayfan wrote:What's different about the South Shore?

The South Shore has Chicago as a hub. There is a fair amount of draw to South Bend for weekend trips, but the service is supported by taxes and delivering people to work in Chicago. The South Shore is doing well enough that there will be a second line serving west Lake County. The South Shore fits in nicely with the commuter mentality of taking the train in to the city for work or play. And that city being Chicago works fairly good.

The Hoosier State isn't a commuter train. Even with a better schedule I would not consider it a commuter train. Lafayette to Chicago or Lafayette to Indianapolis might fit the commuter distance but it would take four trains a day (two each way) to make the route a viable commuter line. Limited service could be provided by having a Friday evening train to get out of the city and a Sunday evening train to return (or possibly a very early Monday train). But which city? Would this be an escape and return to Chicago or an escape and return to Indianapolis or Lafayette? Everyone wants a "better schedule" but there isn't one schedule that would serve all needs.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:I also considered a CHI-LAF-CHI overnight joyride, but too often I learned the Ellis Hoosier State was departing from Canal Street and not Track 18 (busteetoot). Also, with major brand hotels requiring not less than 24hr CX, that could have been costly for nothing.

"Too often?" ... once would be too often if it hit on the day one wanted to travel. It has been a couple of years, but I do not recall bustitution being a regular occurence.
This is where hard statistics would be better than vague memories. Based on worst day performance no Amtrak train is ever on time. It is easier to remember the bad days than the good.