Hiawatha Expansion Price Tag Set at $195M

The price of expanding Hiawatha Service between Chicago and Milwaukee has been put at $195 million by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

A WisDOT official told the Milwaukee Public Transportation Review Board that is how much adding three roundtrips to the route would cost.

The board is pushing for expanded service in order to serve Foxconn Technology Group’s planned Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, facility, which could employ up to 13,000 people. The facility is being built near a Hiawatha station in Sturtevant, Wisconsin.

Arun Rao, WisDOT’s passenger rail manager, said the $195 million figure includes $10 million for a second platform at Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport station and $49 million for two projects at or near downtown’s Milwaukee Intermodal Station.

Amtrak currently operates seven roundtrips between Chicago and Milwaukee with much of the funding coming from grants provided by WisDOT and the Illinois Department of Transportation.

In fiscal year 2017, Hiawatha Service trains carried more than 829,000 passengers. Studies have projected that adding additional trains would boost ridership past 1 million.

Advertisements

Sturtevent Sues Amtrak over Unpaid Bill

Sturtevent, Wisconsin, officials have launched litigation against Amtrak over what the village describes as unpaid fees for repair work done on the station last year.

The village owns the station and is seeking $45,780.56 plus interest, costs, disbursements and attorney fees.

The work involved replacement of the steel bottoms of four glass shelter buildings at the train station, which had rusted over the years

Village Engineer Jeff Seitz said Amtrak leases the depot from Sturtevent and is responsible for 85 percent of its maintenance costs but not for capital improvements.

Amtrak contends the repair work was a capital improvement not a maintenance matter and has declined to pay for the repairs.

“Despite repeated demands, defendants have failed and refused to pay the remaining balance due,” the lawsuit says.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said that the rail passenger carrier is aware of the lawsuit and will respond in court.

Seitz said the lawsuit was expected because the village and Amtrak had been talking about the project, including price quotes, for about a year before the Village Board directed him to get the work performed and then file a claim.

He said it is the first such dispute the village has ever had with Amtrak. Sturtevent officials hopes that a judge will be able to come up with a better definition of what is maintenance and what is a capital improvement at the depot.

The Wisconsin city near Racine is served by Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service trains.

Meeting of the F40 Cabbage Society

I was in Sturtevent, Wisconsin, at the former Milwaukee Road station, which Amtrak still used back in 2006. By chance a pair of Hiawatha Service trains arrived at just about the same time.

That wasn’t planned. The schedule was for one of them to arrive slightly ahead of the other. That one of them was late was fine with me because it meant that I could photograph them having a meet.

As was the practice back in 2006, the southward facing “motive power” was a pair of F40 cabbage cars. The term comes from the fact that these units were built from former F40PH locomotives that had had their prime movers removed and replaced with a baggage compartment.

Sturtevent did not have an Amtrak agent so no checked baggage was handled there on this day.

In Amtrak lingo, these are non-powered control units or NPCUs. To me, they looked very much like the F40s they used to be.

For many trackside observers of Amtrak — myself included — the F40 was the face of Amtrak during our formative years. Sure, I remember E units and SDP40Fs, but the F40 pulled many of the Amtrak trains that I rode and photographed for more years than I rode behind or captured the motive power that preceded them.

There remain a number of these former F40s in service and some have been repainted into Amtrak’s current Phase V livery.

But I most often associate F40s with Phase III, which these units in Sturtevent are still proudly wearing.