Another try at passenger service to Madison

The Wisconsin State Journal reports on another study for linking Madison with Amtrak, with a selection process beginning that is examining six possible station locations. This of course comes a dozen years after the old high(er)-speed rail plan for connecting Madison to Milwaukee and Chicago was killed off at the end of Jim Doyle's term as governor, just prior to Scott Walker taking office following the 2010 elections.

Four of the six options are on the east side of the city, which are likely the most practical since they could potentially allow through-running on existing tracks to the Twin Cities that would still mostly follow the existing Amtrak Empire Builder route. Running through on the Madison isthmus would require either continuing west along the Wisconsin River corridor to Prairie du Chien (south of Amtrak's current routing) and north along the Mississippi, or building a connection west of Madison to turn north and rejoin the Canadian Pacific tracks Amtrak uses.

This appears to be a study being led by the City of Madison rather than WisDOT, and it doesn't seem to be tied to any actual plans for new train service. Instead, this looks like it's just to ensure the city has good plans in place if and when a rail service initiative actually happens, such as one using funding from the recent federal infrastructure bill. (Map from the city's site.)

Video tour of the Autumn Colors Express

Mike on the DownieLive YouTube channel got a ride on a deadhead of the railcars used in the 2022 Autumn Colors Express, including the Milwaukee 261 / Railroading Heritage of Midwest America group's Super Dome and the Cedar Rapids skytop lounge car. He got a trip from Chicago out to Huntington, West Virginia. The video includes clips from cars throughout the train, from historic 20th Century Limited cars near the locomotive end to the 261 group's cars at the tail end.

I think this is the first video I've actually watched from this channel, but I've seen others from it recommended to me, including one on the Rocky Mountaineer in Canada.

Twitter break

Since this site is linked from my bio on Twitter, I'll mention that I'm taking some time off from it. The election had already been making me have to keep it at arm's length, and the acquisition worries the hell out of me. For the moment, I'm planning to be off for about two weeks.

It's been the best place to get breaking news, but has always been a firehose, too. It's easy to spend 3-4 hours there per day, but it also keeps my brain in a jumble all the time with the randomness of what I see. I'm not sure if I'll return to blogging, but getting away from Twitter for a while would help me get back to longer-form thinking, rather than trying to fit things into 280 characters.

I hate to have to explicitly say it, but I hope anyone reading this will be voting for Democrats or the most progressive candidates that they can during this election cycle. The aim of this site had originally been to look forward to a renewed future of rail travel from funding put forth in 2008-2009, but unfortunately the Republican backlash of 2010 stopped a great deal of that forward momentum from happening, and it took me years to realize how much things had gotten stymied.

Building an effective and efficient transportation system requires looking past color boundaries and political differences to work to serve everyone. I do not wish to punish people who vote differently than me or who have a different background, but it's clear there are far too many people largely congregating on the Republican side who do feel that way. That has to be stopped, or only tragedy will ensue.

As for a possibly post-Twitter world, I'm not sure where I may end up. I'd like to post here again, and I hope to return to being more active on Flickr. The local UrbanMSP forum and Streets.mn blog may get more traffic from me too. I also have some long-lingering electronics projects I'd like to get back to, such as ever-present ideas for cheap real-time transit departure displays. And I need to do something that lets me see people in the real world, as we live with the effects of the pandemic that caused so much isolation.

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