During the first weekend in August, we were out hiking in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore when we heard the news -- the Hoosier State
was finally running with Iowa Pacific’s heritage train equipment. This included two engines,
two coaches, and yes… an ex-Santa Fe full-length dome car! This service was several months in the making
and finally happened.
For those of you who don’t know the whole back story… here it the scoop. Let's start by rewinding a few decades. The Hoosier State entered service in October 1980. In April 1986, the long-distance Amtrak Cardinal (which then went from Chicago to Washington, D.C.) was rerouted to use the same tracks as the Hoosier State between Chicago and Indianapolis. The Hoosier State then ran only on days the Cardinal did not operate. The Hoosier State was restored to daily operation on a separate schedule from the Cardinal in October 1987. But funding cuts led to its discontinuance in September 1995 while the Cardinal continued tri-weekly operation between Chicago, Indianapolis and the East Coast. Amtrak restored the Hoosier State in July 1998, as a tri-, later quad-weekly train. From December 1999 to July 2003, the Hoosier State was extended south from Indianapolis to Louisville, Kentucky, and renamed the Kentucky Cardinal. After the discontinuance of the Kentucky Cardinal, the Hoosier State returned to operating four days a week in tandem with the Cardinal.
Fast forward to October 2008. The Passenger Rail Investment
and Improvement Act (PRIIA) was signed into law which required the operating
and capital costs of providing intercity rail passenger service on Amtrak
routes of not more than 750 miles, be taken over by the affected state or
states within five years. At a length of 196 miles, the Hoosier State is
one of the routes affected by this provision of PRIIA. The State of Indiana
became responsible for funding the Hoosier State
beginning in October 2013.
Faced with termination of a service that would have left Chicago to
Indianapolis with tri-weekly train service, state and local officials
arrived
at a deal to share the $3,000,000 annual cost of the service, becoming
the last
state in the nation to arrive at a deal to save its short-distance
train line
in October 2013. Indiana sought alternatives to Amtrak operation
and on June 24, 2014 selected Corridor Capitol, a Chicago-based rail
passenger services development company, as its preferred vendor to
manage and operate the service. Planning was underway for the company
to take over the service as early as October 1, 2014, however Corridor
Capitol did not meet that deadline and Indiana DOT discontinued
negotiations with the company in November 2014. Amtrak continued to
operate the train service under short-term contract extensions while
the state considers alternative vendors. On March 6, 2015, the Indiana
Department of Transportation (INDOT) announced that the Hoosier State
would discontinue service on April 1, 2015. The decision was made due
to regulations of the Federal Railroad Administration that would
require the state of Indiana to act as a rail carrier, despite the
state owning no tracks or trains; that requirement would, according to
INDOT, increase the cost to Indiana taxpayers for no additional
benefit. After Indiana appealed to the FRA, the train's operation was
extended to April 30. On April 6, 2015, INDOT reached an agreement with
Iowa Pacific Railway to take over the route on a temporary basis and
keep it running, while a long term deal is worked out. Iowa Pacific
outlined plans to expand service to multiple trips a day and improve
speeds reducing the time between Chicago and Indianapolis from the
current five hours. After multiple inspections and delays, Iowa Pacific
began running the Hoosier State
on Sunday, August 1, 2015, with the ex-Santa Fe Big Dome “Summit View”
and two passenger cars, with power provided by a fleet of three
GP40FH-2 diesel locomotives.
Now, let's discuss the planning for this trip – which wasn’t easy, as you are about to see. We wanted to check the Hoosier State equipment for ourselves, but timing ending up being our first hurdle. As mentioned, the Cardinal runs three days per week and the Hoosier State runs four days per week… meaning, you have to pay attention to the schedule and see which date each train runs to make your trip work the way you would want it to. For someone who works Monday through Friday, it can be a bit of a challenge, actually, as we learned. The Hoosier State leaves Chicago on Friday nights at 5:45pm, but we knew that departure was out of the question, as there would no way we could get off work at 5:00pm and fight the horrible Friday night Chicago traffic to make it down to Union Station in time for this train. Then, Saturday night’s departure is the Cardinal, which is Amtrak’s long distance train to the east coast. The Sunday night departure from Chicago is the Hoosier State, but if you have to go back to work on Monday morning, that isn’t practical either to do a round-trip. So, we pretty much learned that doing a round-trip on the Hoosier State out of Chicago for someone who works regular business hours on Monday through Friday wasn’t really going to be a real option. So, it looked like we would have to find another mode of transportation south to Indiana and would only be able to catch the Hoosier State back into Chicago on Sunday morning – this made the most sense. So how were we going to do it? Well, we wanted the most time on the Hoosier State equipment so our preferred option was to go all the way down to Indianapolis and do the full 196 mile run back to Chicago. One option was to take the Cardinal down on Saturday night; the positive is this would still be a round-trip train trip, but the negative would be getting just four or five hours of sleep due to the quick turn-around time in Indianapolis between the southbound Cardinal (Train #50) and northbound Hoosier State (Train #851). The other option was to take Megabus from Chicago to Indianapolis; the positives were several departure options, which would give us time to do something in Indianapolis on Saturday night besides sleeping, and of course, the negative, was it was a bus ride, which I do not care much for, compared to taking a comfortable train ride. It turns out either of those options were out of the questions, because EVERY hotel room in Indianapolis was sold out for that Saturday night (August 8th)… apparently even hotel rooms that normally went for $1,200 a pop. We later found out that the reason behind this was a combination of the Indiana State Fair, a country music concert, and a popular motorcycle race that takes place at the same race track the Indianapolis 500. As we were just about to scrap our trip, the idea came into our heads to try and still ride, and just go for an intermediate destination closer to Chicago. At first, we looked at doing the trip to Crawfordsville (the stop just north of Indianapolis). The problem with this was there were no motels near the station. (There was one listed on Google Maps, but it didn't appear to exist on street view or have a legitimate website). The closest motels appeared to be several miles north of town along the interstate… and we didn’t know if it would be a great idea to chance getting a cab ride late at night and early in the morning in such a small town. So, we moved another stop further north and looked at doing this trip to Lafayette, Indiana. There appeared to be several hotels with-in walking distance of the station and there would actually be about eight hours of turn-around time between the Cardinal and Hoosier State to get a good nights rest. So this was the option we finally set out to do… the Cardinal southbound on Saturday (August 8th) night, overnight at a motel in Lafayette, Indiana, and then the Hoosier State northbound on Sunday (August 9th) morning. Going along would be us, Robert and Kandace, and our friend from Milwaukee, Kathy Bruecker. Kathy has been a friend of ours for several years… we met her volunteering on Friends of the 261 excursions.
So, we left Chicago Union Station on the Cardinal right on-time at 5:45pm on Saturday night. Having Amtrak Guest Rewards Select Plus status, all three of us boarded from the Metropolitan Lounge. We did note that the new Legacy Club was now charging $20 per person for a visit (it had been $10 since they opened earlier this summer). We are curious to see what the annual membership fee will be for the club when it is announced by Amtrak. Anyway, since the trip between Chicago and Lafayette, Indiana was so short, we decided just to get coach tickets. We found it interesting that coach on the Cardinal was only going for $19.20 a person after our NARP discounts. The four hour ride here was actually cheaper than the 90-minute ride on the Hiawatha Service between Milwaukee and Chicago, which is now up to $24.00 per person. It doesn't make any sense, even though I am told that the Hiawatha is always at a high price bucket since it's a flat fee unreserved service. The Cardinal consist had three coaches and it appeared that the conductors were sorting people on each car depending on their destination. The first coach was for people going all of the way to the east coast – anywhere from Alexandria, Virginia all the way to New York’s Penn Station. We wondered why people who didn’t appear to be rail fans were purposely choosing to take the Cardinal between Chicago and New York, as they could have taken Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited and gotten to their destination a lot quicker, but oh well. If we have the time, the Cardinal is our preferred train between Chicago and New York because going through the New River Gorge in West Virginia is absolutely beautiful, but of course, if you take a look at a map, it does make no sense at all, as you are dipping south a few hundred miles, then going back up. (We are planning rides on the Cardinal in September for a business trip to West Virginia and then in December for a trip to Washington, D.C. and New York City). Anyway, the second coach seemed to be filled with people with destinations in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, and then the third coach was full of short-haulers going between Dyer, Indiana and Cincinnati. This seemed like a good loading plan, because if you were going to the east coast and would be sleeping overnight on the train, you wouldn’t have to be awakened with people getting off at various stops throughout the night. We settled in and noticed a lot of other people… especially Purdue college students… were also headed to Lafayette, Indiana.
The only other times we have taken the Cardinal we had been in a sleeper, so we were kind of wondering how dinner in the dining car was handled for coach passengers. As you may know, the Cardinal operates with a combiner dining-lounge car. There is a center bar area where food is cooked; one side of the car has about five or six tables that serve as a lounge car; the other side of the car has about five or six tables that are used as the dining car area. Personally, we think this is a horrible set-up, as who wants to be on a train for potentially more than 24 hours and have to fight for five or six tables of “lounge car” space? Likewise, on a train with a few hundred passengers, five or six tables for the dining car isn’t really practical either… meaning only maybe 20 or 25 people could eat at a time. We didn’t know if we were even going to get a sit-down dinner, as we figured the sleeping car passengers would be brought into the dining area first and then us, in coach, would get whatever space was left over. We asked the conductor how this worked and he mentioned that he would make an announcement when the dining car was open for coach passenger and that we should head in there “right away” if we wanted a full sit-down dinner. Just out of Chicago, he made the announcement and we headed in there in an attempt to be part of the first seating. We did walk quickly and were the first three in the dining car and were seated with a nice gentleman who was from Chicago and was going down to Indianapolis for the motorcycle race. That is when the sometimes-typical Amtrak behavior started amongst employees. One member of the dining car crew started to hand us menus and another member of the staff asked us “what do you think you’re doing – we need to seat the sleeping car passengers first!!!”. Complete disorganization. Apparently the conductor was not supposed to make the announcement inviting everyone to the dining car until the sleeping car passengers were taken care of first. Ahhhh.... Oops! The two employees were actually going back and forth on what they should do, as more sleeping car passengers and coach passengers were arriving to eat. They decided to let us stay – and then just tried to do more “to go” orders for people in the sleepers. Of course, the menu ended up being “diner lite” – meaning food they can only cook in the convection oven. No steaks or really quality meal selections here anymore. Mixed reviews on the dinner. Kandace, who had the chicken, said it was actually pretty good. Our dining car partner had the beef and said you could tell it was done in a microwave and wasn’t very good. Kathy and Robert had the pasta and it was just average – tasted like it came out of a can – and really wasn’t worth it for the $15.00 price they were asking. Everyone had the tiramisu for dessert which actually made it better. By the time dinner was over (it took way too long for us to be served) we were already in Rensselaer, Indiana. There was a table in the lounge area that opened up (people waiting for our table, I guess!?), so we decided to sit in there and watch the sunset over the Indiana corn fields. We headed back to our seats a few minutes before coming into Lafayette, and got our belongings together.
Our hotel of choice was the Campus Inn, which was about a 0.4 mile walk from the station. There was a Hilton Garden Inn even closer, but we were not looking for something quite that fancy. We got two rooms that were $69.00 a piece, or about $78.00 after tax. The walk between the station and the Campus Inn took us across a pedestrian walkway over the Wabash River and through a small park, but it was well lit and we felt safe the whole time, as the main highway and business strip were located very close to the walkway. The hotel was clean and comfortable and the manager at the front desk was friendly; we would stay there again. Again, it was nothing fancy, but was very economical for a quick overnight.
The
next morning we all met up in the lobby of the hotel around 6:45am. We
didn’t even bother checking the train status, as we figured the train
would be just coming from Indianapolis and would leave on-time. We
learned that there was about a 45-minute delay from Kathy who did check
the status (we never heard what the source of this delay was, but
really forgot all about it with the beautiful train set we were riding
on). I pulled out my laptop and
started writing this story while everyone else enjoyed a bagel and some
coffee. Soon, it was time to go and walk back to the train station. It
was a beautiful view of the Wabash River now we had some daylight for
our walk back to the station. We met a local on the bridge who
mentioned that the river had been in flood stage for 3 months! We
guess Indiana was in flood stage while northern Illinois and southern
Wisconsin is nearly in drought conditions; it’s been an interesting
summer of contrasting weather. Anyway, we walked down to the loading
area for the Hoosier State.
We found the location of the Lafayette, Indiana station very
interesting. The actual station was an old New York Central station
that was moved a few blocks away to its current location along the
Amtrak (CSX/NS line). There are three tracks that pass through
Lafayette. The two closest to the station are owned by Norfolk Southern
and aren’t used by Amtrak. So yes, there are actually no platforms on
the station side, as Amtrak never stops there. That means passengers
must walk across a pedestrian walkway across the tracks from the
station to board the train every day. Amtrak used the single-track CSX
line on the far west side. We were welcome by a gentleman who said that
he was the “unofficial greeter”. We were trying to figure out if this
was something he did for fun, or if this was actually endorsed by
Amtrak. We figure the first option, as he had a hand-made nametag on
and a fanny pack with some Amtrak patches on. Regardless, he did give
us some interesting tid-bits about the station and the railroad lines
that passed through there. Apparently the NS line went between Chicago
and Fort Wayne, Indiana (where I used to live from 2001-2003), and then
the CSX line was the main freight and passenger line between Chicago
and Indianapolis.
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After
breakfast we were near Dyer, Indiana and headed back to the upper level
of the dome car to enjoy some more views of
Indiana and coming into Chicago. We spent some time talking more with
the Iowa Pacific executive who was very friendly and attentive to what
we thought of the service. Apparently, after about Labor Day or so, the
upper level of the dome car will becoming “business class”, which means
seats will go for about $99.00 one-way, but will feature meals brought
to your seat and unlimited alcohol. Not a bad deal, especially since it
will be a nice way to separate yourself from the noisy college students
and coach passengers. There is also WiFi throughout the train. We look
forward to checking this business class service out later this fall and
hope it is successful for Iowa Pacific. Just after crossing the
Indiana-Illinois State Line, the Iowa Pacific official gave us a
comment card so that we could throw out some ideas for improved service
-- we suggested maybe selling souvenirs? Service was so good, it
was hard to find things to suggest to improve on. The only thing we
didn't care for was one of the Amtrak conductors seems really rude (guy
with the dreadlocks) and barked orders at where people should sit when
we got on and proceeded to put his backpack out in the aisle and block
8 seats for himself; the other conductor was very friendly and even
told us about some of the history of the railroads we were traveling on
and explained how the route of the Hoosier State
was one of the hardest crossings to get into Chicago, as you traveled
across more than a half-dozen railroads (Amtrak, Metra, CSX, Norfolk
Southern, Union Pacific, Indiana Harbor Belt) between Dyer, Indiana and
Chicago Union Station. We didn't know that!
A view of U.S. Cellular Arena, home of the Chicago White Sox, from the dome car - a sign our trip was coming to an end!
(Photo by Robert Tabern)
A photo of our train arriving into Chicago on Sunday, August 9th
(Photo Courtesy: Russell John Sekeet)
The "end of the line" at Chicago Union Station with the Hoosier State and Robert and Kandace Tabern
(Photo by Kathy Bruecker)
