Congestion point: Columbus, WI

The Amtrak station building in Columbus, Wisconsin. From Wikimedia user Downspec, CC-BY-SA

I had a nice little trip on Amtrak's Borealis this past Saturday, May 25th, which allowed me to visit Winona for a few hours. My trip down was smooth, though I got a bit frustrated by delays on the way back. It turns out that my trip to Winona was on the best-performing Borealis train trip so far, and the only one to arrive in Chicago with zero delay up til now. However, my trip back ended up arriving 40 minutes late. I'll take a look at what may be going on with the eastbound/southbound train no. 1340 in the future, but for now I'd like to take a look at one of the likely reasons why my return trip, the westbound/northbound train no. 1333, picked up so much delay.

I included this chart in my previous post welcoming the beginning of Borealis operation. It's a stringline diagram, showing the approximate scheduled location of each train on a particular corridor over time. What I'd like to focus on in this post is the first crossing point of the longer lines, which occurs near the "CBS" horizontal line representing Columbus station in Wisconsin.

That point in the graph shows where and when the eastbound Empire Builder, train no. 8, is intended to meet the westbound Borealis, train no. 1333. Train 8 is scheduled to depart St. Paul at 8:50 am, leave Columbus at 1:47 pm, and continue on to arrive in Chicago at 4:45 pm. Train 1333 is scheduled to depart Chicago at 11:05 am, leave Columbus at 1:41 pm, and reach St. Paul at 6:29 pm.

The difference of just 6 minutes between the schedule of these two trains will mean that they will often both want to be at Columbus station at the same time, or at least in very close proximity. If they're both running exactly on time, they should run headlong into each other just west of town.

The good news is that there is double-track in Columbus, which should allow the two trains to pass each other. Google Streetview even shows two platforms at the station, though they are in poor condition according to this imagery from 2021.

Google Streetview image of the Columbus station platforms and tracks, with a simple wire fence between them

However, looking through location history of trains that have run so far, the westbound Borealis is frequently getting stuck at a point east of Columbus, halfway between Astico and Reeseville, waiting for the Empire Builder or other trains to pass. This is one of the most obvious places causing delay for westbound trains, a slowdown which is proving hard for trains to recover from as they make their way to St. Paul.

Borealis trains are racking up significant delays between Milwaukee and Columbus

So, what's going on here?

Well, first off, I'm hoping this is just a temporary situation. Columbus is one of Amtrak's many stations that are undergoing construction to upgrade platforms, walkways, and other parts of the station area to current ADA standards. Work is expected to be completed in Amtrak's next fiscal year, meaning sometime after October 1st. While this won't provide high platforms like those present in many East Coast cities, they will be raised up several inches and will get yellow tactile pavers like what we're accustomed to at urban rail and enhanced bus stops.

Based on video from news outlets and YouTube channels such as Trains Are Awesome, where Thom visited Columbus for an afternoon, it looks like only one of the two platforms is currently able to be used.

Okay, so one track is out of commission for passenger service. That shouldn't be such a big deal, right? The trains can just cross over to the other track somewhere nearby, right?

Well, no, unfortunately.

The map above shows the area of double- and single-tracking near Columbus (zoom in to see the track hidden by the icons). Double-tracked sections are shown in an orange-yellow color, and single-tracked sections are shown in dark red. I've included green "X" icons showing where switches are located, and stoplight icons indicate ends of signal blocks, generally spaced about 2 miles apart. Columbus is in a long stretch of about 23 miles of double-tracking, but unfortunately, the nearest crossing between those tracks is about 6 miles east of the city, which is where the westbound Borealis is often getting stuck.

Critically, that crossover point is on the opposite side of town from where the Empire Builder and Borealis are scheduled to meet each other. West of the station, there aren't any real crossing points that can be used in this situation. The double-track section begins around 7 miles west of town, but that only provides the eastbound trains the option of going on the track with the out-of-service platform. Combined with the nearly 11-mile single-track stretch running from near Doylestown west to Wyocena, that effectively creates a 24-mile single-track section for passenger trains (from Wyocena through Columbus to the crossover between Astico and Reeseville).

That distance really closely corresponds to the delays the no. 1333 trains have been experiencing.  Pretty wild that a 400-foot stretch of missing pavement can have such an effect—get delayed by 15 minutes or so getting to Columbus as the track clears, only to arrive late to the congested east Twin Cities region, and get delayed even further due to missed windows.

Well, I'm taking a bit of a leap in assuming that's what's going on, but it seems to be the simplest explanation. I hope the station construction can be accelerated, at least enough to get both platforms usable.

I'm not sure how the train crews will the different groups of riders, especially since Columbus hasn't had a station attendant since 2017—it would probably make sense for this station to be staffed, just since someone should be around to shepherd people around to the right places before the trains show up. They're long enough to block the nearby crossings while boarding and disembarking happens, so it's really important for passengers to be in the right spots ahead of time. The station has had a simple fence between the tracks since 2016, so it appears that passengers have to walk down to Ludington Street just east of the station to cross over to the other side.

A more robust solution would be to add crossover tracks west of the station, to allow trains to switch tracks much closer to the stop and at a point that naturally aligns with the schedule. It would mean that only one platform would need to be used, and would also help reduce the chance that a late Empire Builder would induce even greater delays. There is a set of block signals about half a mile away from the station past Lewis Street that would probably be an ideal spot to add switches.

There are track improvements planned in La Crosse, La Crescent, and Winona that are supposed to help the Borealis and any future added service operate more smoothly. Perhaps that will shift the schedules a bit too. If those changes allow the Empire Builder to consistently arrive a several minutes earlier, that would shift the meeting point east of Columbus station and reduce the need for any track changes there.

Of course, a lot of this trouble would be eliminated if we could get a commitment to converting much more of the whole route to double-tracking. The single-track corridors that dominate rail in the U.S. definitely make it much harder to add new passenger service here vs. what's possible in Europe and elsewhere. That flexibility would be priceless.

Welcome to the Borealis

Amtrak Borealis train waiting to depart St. Paul Union Depot on May 25th (further description on the Flickr version)

Finally.

It has taken a lifetime, but there are two train pairs a day running again on tracks between St. Paul and Chicago. Amtrak's new Borealis joins the storied Empire Builder to expand upon the extremely skeletal passenger service we've had to deal with across the Midwest and the rest of the country. Amtrak operated overnight sleeper trains from 1972 to 1981 (the Empire Builder complemented by the North Coast Hiawatha / Twin Cities Hiawatha and later North Star), but you'd have to run farther back to the pre-Amtrak era before 1971 to have multiple daytime trains on the route.

It's turned out to be a bittersweet time for me, since my father had moved into a senior care facility in the weeks leading up to the start of service. One of the reasons I started this blog in 2010 was because that marked nearly 20 years since my dad brought my brother and me to a public meeting about high-speed rail service being planned between the Twin Cities and Chicago, and we went to an event in Rochester where people were hoping it could pass through that city. Now, we're approaching 35 years since that study was done, and prospects of real HSR or even reasonably-frequent standard service seem more distant than ever—especially anything connecting Rochester.

Still, it has been a huge morale boost to see this train start running, much like how the start of Northstar commuter service in 2009 altered the way I looked at rail connectivity. That was a big contributor to why I started digging more into regional and intercity rail, while my previous focus had been more on metro-area streetcar and current/future light rail lines. I think a lot of people tend to focus too much on particular modes, while we need a holistic approach that provides mass transportation that works at many different scales, ranging from local ones that have stops just a few blocks apart up to high-speed lines with stops dozens or even hundreds of miles apart.

I have many thoughts swirling about how the Borealis is currently operating, what needs to be done to ensure its success, and options for future expansion. I hope this is a turning point for rail service in our region, and I'm glad to see there are other bright spots across the country where improvements are underway. Perhaps best of all, we finally have federal coordination through the Corridor ID (Identification and Development) program, which looks like it will be able to shepherd along the many different state and regional plans that often suffer from breakdowns in inter-state coordination. (It's a shame that states have had to put so much direct support into planning and funding anything under 750 miles in length—routes almost guaranteed to be interstate in nature, and always putting such lines at risk when states get out of sync with each other in terms of policy and planning.)

For now, I just want to welcome the Borealis, and hope to ride it often. I've already been able to take a day-trip down to Winona and back, and in combination with the Empire Builder, it will make it much easier to get to points further south and east. I have a future trip scheduled to La Crosse that will use a combination of trains, and we'll just have to see where else I decide to go.

A stringline chart showing the current schedules of the Empire Builder, Borealis, and Hiawatha trains between St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago