Northwestern Illinois Coalition Works to Bring Passenger Rail Service Back

Galena, IL - "I love the noise, I love the place where I live, I love the trains," says Liz Carter, a rail activist from Galena. Carter bought the building next to the rail line seven years ago. Shes now formed a group to bring more traffic to the tracks. "I feel that this particular part of the state could really use passenger rail service," says Carter. "We just had a huge success," says Rick Harnish, Executive Director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, a non-profit group with 1,700 members. "The state has agreed to double the Amtrak service downstate, and we think that`s the first step towards a statewide rail plan." The mayors of Freeport, Galena, and Dubuque agree. They met at the Railway Café to craft a game plan to persuade state senators and representatives to expand Amtrak service from Chicago. The rail line the Amtrak passenger service would run through is next to the Railway Café and owned by Canadian National Railroad. It runs through Illinois and Iowa and sees about seven trains a day. "We would accommodate the passenger service after we review the tracks and see if they can handle the additional stress Amtrak places on them," says Jim Kvedaras, CN spokesperson. "But right now this is nothing but conjecture." "It would be very easy to upgrade these tracks to run very competitive passenger train service," says Harnish. Harnish says the problem for the Northwest region is competing with the rest of the state vying for a better linkage to Chicago. Amtrak first served the area from February 1974 to September 1981. The passenger railway service ran from Chicago all the way to Dubuque, Iowa, but was scrapped because of poor ridership.