QUINCY, Ill. — The Illinois Zephyr — a workaday locomotive and four cars sitting in the predawn darkness in Quincy, Ill. — isn’t the sleek, futuristic image of high-speed travel, but it’s what some Eastern Iowans have worked toward for years.
http://thegazette.com/2011/04/17/success-of-quincy-line-holds-hope-for-i-c-rail-service/
Decent article - some facts in addition to the ‘personal interest’ accounts, lot of aspects are considered and mentioned - some food for discussion there. Thanks for sharing !
Good article from the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Ironically, the one part of the article that I happened to disagree with came from one of my professors that I had back when I was a student at the U of Iowa; John G. Fuller. I’m a little surprised he feels that way.
Yes, good story. Note the $190,000 annual contribution (toward the proposed $1.5 million local contribution to the state’s $3 million operating subsidy) written in for Linn County. That’s Cedar Rapids, where the train wouldn’t go, although it’s only 30 miles to the north.
Scott County (Davenport and Bettendorf) is supposed to ante up $447,000. What interests me is the $387,000 assessed Polk County – or Des Moines --120 miles west of the Iowa City terminus. (This per a March 18 Gazette story you can find on the gazette.com site using the command ‘iowa city passenger rail’.)
There has been hope all along that the train would eventually find its way to Des Moines (and even Omaha), and this would appear to reinforce that ambition.
As an old Rock Island rider, I would love to steam into Iowa City again by train before I die. And trucks have made driving I-80 a miserable experience. But I am with the skeptical U of I prof. I think too much water has passed under the bridge since the early 1960s, when the Rock was last worth riding. That’s 50 years ago!