Can't we all get along?

I thought it would be nice to take an Amtrak trip in the Midwest this fall. A train trip purely for the sake of a train trip, and go somewhere I've never been on a train before. Seems pretty simple, right? Wrong.

I'd ridden the Empire Builder (and even Hiawathas) long before I moved to Wisconsin, so there's no new mileage for me here. There are still four corridors and a few other routes out of Chicago I've never seen. But, unfortunately, lack of foresight and planning on behalf of the states supporting the corridors conspires to make them pretty much useless as connecting services.

The first southbound Hiawatha departs Milwaukee a 6:15 a.m. and arrives in Chicago at 7:57 a.m. That's a much easier train trip to the Windy City than I ever had out of Toledo. (And six days a week, there are seven round trips!)

My first thought was to go to St. Louis, ride some light rail, see the Gateway Arch, and come home on Sunday. The southbound trip works out great. The first Lincoln Service departure from Chicago is at 9:25 a.m., a reasonable 1.5-hour layover from my inbound Hiawatha. The return trip, however is the weak link here.
 
 The last northbound Hiawatha departs Chicago at 8:05 p.m. The 3 p.m. Lincoln Service departure from St. Louis arrives in Chicago at 8:40 p.m. Close, but no connection. The next previous departure? The Texas Eagle at 7:55 a.m., which gets me back to Chicago at 1:52 p.m. (in theory). And the two morning Lincoln Service departures leave St. Louis at 4:35 and 6:40 a.m.

So my "weekend" in St. Louis turned into a 3 p.m. arrival and an early morning departure from the hotel the next morning. Is that worth spending a couple hundred dollars on rail fare and a hotel in the city? Not hardly.

Unfortunately, the other trip options, didn't even get that far in the planning stages. The morning trains to Michigan and Quincy depart before the first Hiawatha arrives in Chicago and the morning train to Carbondale only has an 18-minute connection time. A little too tight for personal taste, and too close for Amtrak to offer it as a scheduled connection, too.

So what other options are available? Well, the 8:05 a.m. departure from Milwaukee connects with the 12:50 p.m. Wolverine departure in Chicago (after an almost 3.5-hour layover), making for an 8:12 p.m. arrival in Pontiac, Mich. No thanks. The 3 p.m. Hiawatha departure from Milwaukee connects with the 5:55 p.m. train from Chicago to Quincy, Ill., that arrives at 10:23 p.m. No thanks, again. I could also depart Chicago at 4:05 p.m. and arrive in Carbondale at 9:35 p.m. on train No. 393 (or take train No. 59 and arrive at 1:21 a.m.!). Strike three.

Giving up on the idea of doing anything on the layover, I decided to see how much new mileage I could cram into a weekend trip in the Midwest. The best new mileage trip I could concoct departs Milwaukee at 6:15 a.m. on train No. 330 and arrives in Chicago in time for a 9:25 departure on train No. 303 for St. Louis. The train turns into No. 313 with a 4 p.m. departure for Kansas City and a 9:40 p.m. arrival there. The following morning, take train No. 4 at 7:43 a.m. and arrive in Chicago in time for the 5:08 p.m. Hiawatha back to Milwaukee. Two full days of train riding and 842 "new" miles covered in two days. (But with the arrival time in K.C., it's a much better trip for May or June and not October.)

So after all of the schedule studying I began to wonder: Why can't the Midwest states that support rail service work better together? Why can't the first Hiawatha arrive with reasonable connections to Detroit and points in Illinois? Why can't someone travel from St. Louis to Detroit without a pre-dawn departure or a post-midnight arrival? I guess that's up to the states, in spite of the promise of one national rail operator.