I'm not even sure if restoring the K-Card would get them over the 750 mile mark, at which point they could keep it running.
If you are talking about the train that ran between Chicago and Louisville (actually just across the river in Indiana) then that is about 300 miles as the highway runs. Maybe a little longer the way the train ran.
It looks like the only way to stitch that together would be to run all the way to Nashville (or something like that). That's not happening...Amtrak just doesn't have the cars for such an operation, and a dead-end run into Nashville would (IMHO) be a thinly-patronized run given both likely track speeds and the lack of anything to connect to outside of CHI.
One thing I
do wonder about, though...where does the Card hit the BBRR? I can't help but wonder if there's not some way to get a full service that "pairs" with the existing Card (say, a resurrected Hilltopper or something on the Powhatan Arrow's old route) so that
something can be preserved in that slot.