St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago (TCMC) second daily service

[MARC Rider]

I would have thought that to most people who are not railfans, the name Hiawatha is primarily associated with the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if not with the Native American figure on who that poem is based.

I guess far fewer know it also is, or ever was, a famous train.

Yeah, and the poem is based on some really outdated and probably incorrect ethnography regarding Ojibwe legends. I mean you can't blame Longfellow too much, as it was his sources that were faulty. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Hiawatha) Anyway, the real Hiawatha was from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Federation, so if the name "Hiawatha" is used for a train, it more properly applies to the Empire Service west of Albany.

The fact that 19th century railway robber barons appropriated the name incorrectly should be irrelevant for the purposes of naming the Twin Cities services, and, anyway, many potential customers might be offended at the cultural appropriation, especially because it's done incorrectly.

 

[Steve4031]

My GF is not a railfan. However, my conversations with her provide insight into how non-railfans look at Amtrak and train names. If everything is okay, then, "the train was on time". We frequently travel to St. Louis. When she books her trips she refuses to ride the Texas Eagle and is aware of its name and train number, because it was several hours late on some of the times we rode it together. I selected it because I liked having a roomette and a dining car. She did not enjoy those delays at all.

 

[OmahaRoad]

I would have thought that to most people who are not railfans, the name Hiawatha is primarily associated with the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if not with the Native American figure on who that poem is based.

I guess far fewer know it also is, or ever was, a famous train.

Yes, for most general adults, I am sure that would be the association, and that many fewer would have any idea about the train.

Speaking specifically about younger people...I don't believe the Longfellow poem has been mentioned/taught in schools or been a part of general culture (as it once was in the Upper Midwest especially) for awhile, or not nearly to the extent it once was. I mean, I'm close to 30 (ahh!) and when I was in early elementary school over 2 decades ago in MN, we sang a kid version of some of the poem set to music, but that was the only real mention of it; I was more familiar with it due to my grandma, who liked the poem.

Anyway! Back to waiting for the start of service announcement

 

[OmahaRoad]

The fact that 19th century railway robber barons appropriated the name incorrectly should be irrelevant for the purposes of naming the Twin Cities services, and, anyway, many potential customers might be offended at the cultural appropriation, especially because it's done incorrectly.

Yes, and to be totally honest, due to the active Native American/Indigenous community in Minneapolis and Minnesota generally, it is fairly possible that, should the Hiawatha name be chosen for this service, there will be activism and unhappiness at some point--if not outright offense--around the name. As you said, it's an incorrectly appropriated name that would geographically be most appropriate in New York state! Ah well, not my problem if they use this name instead of Great River or Borealis, which are both fine names.

 

[Mr.Technician]

Given the hype surrounding the TCMC train and that I live near MSP, I'm tempted to book tickets and ride it from MSP to CHI to celebrate it! (Maybe even do a little RailForLess meetup ).

 

[WWW]

I really don't care what it is called named or its distinction with a geographic area - - - - -
JUST GET THE DARN THING ON THE RAILS AND RUNNING !

 

[west point]

Until a schedule is written in stone will not care about speculation about a name.

 

[moselman66]

Latest updates posted today on Youtube -- this appears to be a presentation by the Great River Rail Commission.



Highlights:

--They are close to the final agreement between Amtrak and the three states, including how to incorporate funding from an FRA restoration & enhancement grant made to WisDOT into the shared cost splitting between the entities. Once this is inked service ccould begin as soon as about six weeks.

--Final detals on things like pricing and cafe offerings are still being worked through

--The agreement between Ramsey County and Amtrak over train usage and overnight storage at SPUD are also close, with entities exchanging reline copies of the final agreement. As soon as the two parties work through the differences it will go to the county for approval. A small chance remains for the 3/19 meeting but most likely for the 4/2 meeting.

--One of the stumbling blocks is that Amtrak wants exclusive rights to SPUD over all other users, something Ramsey County (the owner of SPUD) is not willing to grant.

Through the presentation terms like "final stage" and "very close" were used many times, but it's not done until it's done.

When the key hurdles are cleared, most notably the Amtrak/IL/MN/WI agreement and Amtrak/Ramsey County agreement on SPUD, target launch date would likely about about 6 weeks out, including the public rollout about four weeks before start.

 

[OmahaRoad]

Latest updates posted today on Youtube -- this appears to be a presentation by the Great River Rail Commission.

Thanks so much for sharing the info and link, moselman! I am glad that someone was actually able to access the meeting virtually--I tried to join via Zoom to watch and learn this info live, and they must not have updated the links because I couldn't get in via any format (call-in, Zoom on phone, on computer, etc.). So, very glad to hear this and thanks again for keeping us all updated!

I am hoping this means that the service could (possibly) begin sometime in May, though I'd guess that if a potential start date gets too close to Memorial Day weekend they'll start it in June instead to be after the holiday; presumably that's a time when more Amtrak employees than usual are off and I wonder if they'd get cold feet about availability? Crossing my fingers for the two remaining agreements to be signed in the next 3-ish weeks and then for a service announcement! I guess that presumes they can figure out pricing and cafe offerings, though if that became the holdup I'd laugh; shouldn't be that hard.

 

[railiner]

-One of the stumbling blocks is that Amtrak wants exclusive rights to SPUD over all other users, something Ramsey County (the owner of SPUD) is not willing to grant.

I am scratching my head over that...what possible concern is it of Amtrak? Afraid of future competition? Not likely. Maybe limiting their space, or impeding their operation? Also not likely....

 

[OmahaRoad]

I am scratching my head over that...what possible concern is it of Amtrak? Afraid of future competition? Not likely. Maybe limiting their space, or impeding their operation? Also not likely....

Me too--I really can't think of what their big issue is. Certainly not a space issue at this time. That said, I wonder if it's possible that Amtrak is scared of Brightline coming up north and trying to run a competing MSP - CHI service at some point?! Maybe? I can't think of any possible concerns beyond that already far-fetched point. I am not saying that would be easy at ALL for Brightline to do, but I could see Ramsey County balking at exclusive rights for Amtrak if there's even been the slightest inkling of Brightline trying to serve this corridor at some point.

 

[Silophant]

There were some fairly plausible rumors a while back of Amtrak being (understandably) unhappy that Ramsey County keeps renting out the SPUD waiting room for weddings and the like, squeezing all of the actual Amtrak customers off to the side of the space and making it hard for announcements to be heard over the DJs and so on. I'm reasonably sure they're referencing that, not trying to box out a theoretical Brightline competing service.

 

[OmahaRoad]

There were some fairly plausible rumors a while back of Amtrak being (understandably) unhappy that Ramsey County keeps renting out the SPUD waiting room for weddings and the like, squeezing all of the actual Amtrak customers off to the side of the space and making it hard for announcements to be heard over the DJs and so on. I'm reasonably sure they're referencing that, not trying to box out a theoretical Brightline competing service.

Ah yes, very true. My tired brain was only thinking about "space" in terms of the track storage space for the service equipment, not about the whole SPUD interior space issue. That's my pet peeve and it really is embarrassing; Ramsey County needs to get with the program and stop treating what is meant to be a intra- and inter-city transportation center as a glorified event space for "Doggie Depot" (lol) and loud weddings that force passengers to crowd behind pipe and drape.
As you can see, I have absolutely no opinions on that subject

 

[Steve4031]

The great hall at union station in Chicago has been closed for events too. Though I usually use the metropolitan lounge, I find this practice offensive. It was such a problem at the curio union station hotel in St Louis that I quit booking there.

 

[OmahaRoad]

I went and listened to the whole video that Moselman provided, and upon closer examination, Ramsey County and Amtrak have indeed had real, intense disagreements about the "exclusive rights" issue. This is not related to the disagreements about the operation of indoor space at SPUD. Commissioner Martinson of Ramsey County explained that they're worried about making the County the de facto decisionmaker for who will operate future passenger rail in MN, all associated agreements, etc., since most proposed future services in MN would use SPUD.

Commissioner Martinson said a number of things to the effect of "There are other trains that do come in or want to come in with special events and otherwise [Metro Transit once ran a Northstar commuter rail holiday train to SPUD, plus there's Train Days each May, not anything else really], and we don't want to keep other 'trains' [read: operators] from using SPUD in the future."

Stakeholders in the meeting expressed intense concern about this service being on-time, given the huge OTP issues with the Empire Builder. In fact, Commissioner Martinson explicitly said, to the question/issue of OTP, "That's why we don't want to give them exclusive rights, because if at some point their service isn't there, we need to look at other providers!" Of course, it's unlikely that "other providers" would be able to do anything very different, but MN folks may not be as aware of that. Those not from MN must understand that when a once-daily, usually-delayed Empire Builder is an entire state's sum total of Amtrak service for nearly 40 years, people naturally have a low opinion of Amtrak. Is this situation in part the state's fault [no support for decades] and also mostly out of Amtrak's control? Yes, but the blame flows to the main & obvious entity. Here's hoping OTP for the TCMC service is, indeed, far better than the EB.

 

[moselman66]

Operating reliably will be key in building the MSP-CHI traffic. I pulled stats for the past two years and it's pretty ugly eastbound. If the train departs on time things are pretty good, but if not...well...

For this I used arriving Chicago within 30 minutes of schedule as on-time.

Overall -- 44.0% on time
No surprise that potential passengers are wary of on-time performance for the eastbound leg.


Results vary a ton by when the train leaves MSP

About half of all trains left MSP no more than 30 minutes late, and for those lucky half the on-time performance was pretty good. That's most true if it left exactly on time.

93.5% on time if the train leaves MSP exactly at scheduled time. Any route would be pleased with this, and even the longest delays were rarely much more than an hour.



82.7% on time if the train leaves MSP 1-14 minutes late, and most delays were 31-59 minutes. Late but probably not awful, and very few much over 70 minutes.



62.3% on time if the train leaves MSP 15-30 minutes late. Not super but this is probably where trains are starting to miss their normal encounters with freights and sitting more. Plus if you're getting a late start - say 27 minutes for example -- you can lose no more than 3 minutes enroute to stay on-time. Hopefully the infrastracture improvments around the general La Crosse / Winona areas can help trains like this not lose an additinal 30-60 minutes.




5.2% on time if the train leaves MSP 31+ minutes late -- here's the ugliness which sends passengers fleeing. And this accounts for about half of all eastbound departures during the two-year period. Nearly all of these are late inbounds, and that is something having the TCMC originate in St Paul should pretty much eliminate.



By the very nature of the TCMC these should be nearly eliminated. As long as equipment is reasonbly reliable hopefully few if any trains are more than a few minutes late departing SPUD, and if so odds of arriving Chicago on time are very good.

 

[Silophant]

I stand corrected! I guess that makes sense - there's only two tracks at SPUD, but with the only scheduled service being an EB in each direction, 10-14 hours apart, that second track has effectively been open for Train Days displays or that holiday Northstar run, etc. With a TCMC train laying over there from 6:30 each night til 11:30 the next morning, that won't work anymore. I suppose the Eau Claire - St. Paul corridor that got a Corridor ID grant could potentially be operated by some entity besides Amtrak, it's probably worth not foreclosing on that possibility before the study even starts.

 

[OmahaRoad]

Great reminder about the Eau Claire service, Silophant! The West Central Wisconsin Passenger Rail Coaition mentions on their website that they'd like to see a "...self-sustaining, private passenger rail service to link Eau Claire and other west central Wisconsin cities with the Twin Cities," so they're clearly very open to and even prefer someone other than Amtrak operating that service. Their proposal is 4 trips/day, and their most recent news update also mentions doing it privately, while an earlier news update (scroll down on same page) explains that their coalition's Corridor ID application *explicity* proposed a competitive process to select a train operator, so Amtrak having exclusive rights to SPUD would sink their entire idea. Given that, I'm almost certain that Eau Claire folks pressured Ramsey County to not give in to Amtrak. I don't blame them, since I think they feel it could happen faster if they didn't go through the entire suite of federal processes. Who knows, but good to keep options open.

According to the second link I shared above, WisDOT is starting the "Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Eau Claire, Twin Cities corridor" study this summer! It's nice to see progress on the use Corridor ID study funding.

 

[Harmon Shay]

Maybe I missed something along the way, but while it appears that it'll be treated between Chicago and Milwaukee like a Hiawatha train, I haven't seen anything indicating that they would use a Hiawatha consist "as-is." Given the run time I'd be shocked if they ran it without at least a café car or equivalent - a roughly 6-8 hour trip would need some sort of food service that could suffice for a meal at minimum, at least if they want it to be successful. Whether that includes business class as well is unknown, though I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't include it given the run time.

But I think they're going to have to get some of the Midwest cafe-lounges into service before anything will be available for the second Chicago-St. Paul train. As it is now, they don't have enough club dinettes to give Seattle a spare for the Cascades. We have one of our six Cascades Horizon trainsets running without a food service car right now, at least as of yesterday. I'm NPRocky, by the way, a brand new member.

 

[west point]

Have never visited SPUD. With its present configuration can more tracks and another platform(s) be added. In the past what was its configuration?

 

[OmahaRoad]

But I think they're going to have to get some of the Midwest cafe-lounges into service before anything will be available for the second Chicago-St. Paul train.

I assume you are correct here; it seems like there's not much at all available for cafe cars. Which is really too bad, and people will probably complain if that's the case. But so is life!

Then again, Ramsey County leaders at the recent Great River Rail Commission meeting claimed that there's pressure from "the very top" (Biden Administration) and even from Amtrak generally, to get this service running. They really want the TCMC to be an example of successful investment in passenger rail. There's also lots of pressure from state and local advocacy organizations, legislative and other state government leaders, etc. This service has been hyped for so long in MN and WI that there's a ton of general & political exposure. Not to mention that I'd guess Amtrak feels pressure to show positive momentum and get at least *this* service going while the Gulf Coast service languishes due to the Mobile-related issues.

What I'm saying is that although you can't produce cafe cars that don't exist, if any new Amtrak service were to be prioritized by being at the front of the line for equipment, it'd probably be this one.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

But I think they're going to have to get some of the Midwest cafe-lounges into service before anything will be available for the second Chicago-St. Paul train. As it is now, they don't have enough club dinettes to give Seattle a spare for the Cascades. We have one of our six Cascades Horizon trainsets running without a food service car right now, at least as of yesterday. I'm NPRocky, by the way, a brand new member.

Welcome!

 

[Silophant]

Have never visited SPUD. With its present configuration can more tracks and another platform(s) be added. In the past what was its configuration?

According to Wikipedia, it originally had 10 through-running and 8 stub-end tracks. The area where the stub-end tracks were is now the bus platform area, but there's about 160' between the edge of that and the existing platform track. The current platform and track on either side takes up about 50', so I'd guess they could squeeze in another three platforms and six tracks, if everyone's wildest dreams came true and there was that much service to St. Paul again.

 

[WWW]

Have never visited SPUD. With its present configuration can more tracks and another platform(s) be added. In the past what was its configuration?

I don't recall the past SPUD trackage (* see later comment) but this Google map Link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9467552,-93.0851925,119m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

shows 3 tracks under the head house - 2 are thru tracks which Amtrak uses
That 3rd dead end track I believe was planned for perhaps some inter city rail SPUD to Target Field ?
That track could be extended to make another thru track.

The real complexity of this is the 60 some freight trains transiting the Division Street WYE just
east of SPUD - zoom out on that map link - BNSF CP CN UP TCW (more*) all cross travel blocking
access to/from SPUD in some way. Some of these freights have 135+ cars and as many as 6 locomotives - - -
It takes what seems forever for this WYE to have clear trackage.
Amtrak #7 is really hampered by this - leaves CUS on time and progresses fairly well thru Wisconsin
stops and up river to the crossing at Hastings then delay set in waiting for clear tracks thru the WYE
to SPUD - thus on an On-Time arrival snatches delay from the jaws of what coulda shoulda been
schedule.

Interesting a brief history in the mid 19th Century there were 2 depots in Minneapolis the Great Northern
located where the Federal Reserve Bank is Hennepin Avenue river crossing and the Milwaukee
3rd and Washington Avenue - The Milwaukee depot building is still there. From these two depots
train travel was possible to just about anywhere in the upper midwest.
In St. Paul the venerable SPUD served for years until the USPS took over the building for a regional
mail distribution sorting center causing Amtrak to move its operation to the Midway depot location.
This location has been brought up time and time again to be used again as a joint operation between
the Twin Cities replacing SPUD Target Field creating one uniform railroad transportation center.
Problem here location location location out in between the cities in a Commercial Rail freight yard.
Zoom map link out and follow the tracks to see this or use this link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9629944,-93.1845059,424m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

That dark rectangular shape building in the center of the link is the old Midway depot.

No hotels - no night entertainment - limited restaurants - a good block walk to the exisitng
Green Line lite rail (in the winter or weather related issues who wants to put up with that !)

SPUD is the answer but future trains traveling north to say Duluth need to stop in or near
downtown Minneapolis and perhaps have good connections to the MSP airport ?

There is plenty of room for Amtrak trains 7 & 8 and the 7X? & 8X? second Chicago train.
The 7X? & 8X? could easily start in Minneapolis
The trips to Duluth (I heard as many a 4 daily?) can certainly be fitted into a schedule - - -
What do the airlines do with a limited number of gates to work with ? Think about it !

As for private trains these too can be fitted into the/a schedule.
* Comment:
Walking the great hall at SPUD there must have been perhaps 8 tracks - some where
thru tracks 3 or 4 ?
Some of these must have been back ended to exit the way they arrived
to go the Midway subdivision route to Minneapolis and other points !

I remember of a Cub Scout outing going from the Milwaukee Depot in Minneapolis
via the Short Line to the SPUD in St. Paul and returning to the Great Northern depot via the Midway SD.

 

[OmahaRoad]

The current platform and track on either side takes up about 50', so I'd guess they could squeeze in another three platforms and six tracks, if everyone's wildest dreams came true and there was that much service to St. Paul again.

I've done the same in the past and come to the same conclusion--if they did it well, 6 additional tracks. It's nice that they retained enough space for at least the possibility of expansion.

And if is expansion is ever needed, operationally? Well, that does represent my wildest rail dreams for passenger rail in Minnesota. Then again, Raleigh Union Station here in NC makes do with "only" 2 tracks to serve 12 trains a day, or 8 more than SPUD will serve even with the TCMC running, so unless train storage became an issue I don't see it happening for a long while. But a man can dream!