Train service to French Lick is slated to begin Sept. 27 with a special black-tie inaugural run.
Thereafter, trains will run every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The 24-mile trip will take about an hour. Advance tickets, at $15 per roundtrip, will go on sale at a special “Old Jasper Days” celebration June 1.
Round-trip tickets bought at departure will be $20. The French Lick Casino is planning to give each train passenger a $10 casino credit.
At first, the train will have two rail cars, each with a 40-passenger capacity. Seating will be chairs at tables. The cars will be air-conditioned, heated and carpeted. The engine will be named the “Spirit of Jasper.”
Ken Schmidt, a coalition board member, said, “There has been so much interest in the train service. Groups from Evansville already want to lease the train and go to French Lick.”
Jasper-to-French Lick passenger train transportation originally began in 1908, but was discontinued in 1937. A portion of the track between Dubois and Cuzco is being rebuilt.
I wish them the best of luck and who knows such an ambition undertaking in these times may lead to other such ventures across the country. After all with gasoline fast approaching $4.00 per gallon and no end in site to what it might reach this could be the start of something good.
The casino in Hinckley, MN is one of the primary drivers in the push to get passenger service re-established between Minneapolis and Duluth on the BNSF. Rising gasoline costs, thanks partly to the new gas-tax increase shoved-through thanks to our “courageous” legislature [censored], is probably going to start biting-into indian gaming revenues. We’ve gotta find new ways to get grandma & grandpa with their bucket of quarters in front of their slots, and passenger rail service and a wheel-chair-ready shuttle bus to/from the old GN line is one way to do it.
Another benefit would be air passengers not wanting to fly into/out of Duluth’s airport, which, at last report, is one of the worst facilities in the upper Midwest. Taking the train from Duluth down to MSP is getting more and more attractive.
I’d use the train - not to get to the casino, but because there’s a restaurant right near the GN & NP crossing that has a fantastic salad bar.
By law, Amtrak has a monopoly on inter-city rail services.
I suspect there are several ways to define the term “inter-city,” some of which would guarantee Amtrak’s monopoly, others of which wouldn’t. I notice from a later post that a casino in Northern MN has the same idea about running a train. - a. s.
And also past the Urban Mass Transit Act (UMTA) of 1971, which forbade public transportation owned or operated by for-profit companies. If such a train were proposed back east, it would be run by a local public transit authority (SEPTA, NJT, MBTA) or by Amtrak.
Nonetheless, I think the casino specials are a tremendous idea, and the UMTA, if still in effect, should be modernized or amended. If no one else is offering train service, why not? It’s like homesteading. Also, if the trains aren’t defined as “common carriers” I guess that would make it easier to evade Amtrak’s monopoly, if indeed it would have a monopoly in this case.
We rag on’em all the time, but is there a lawyer in the house? - a. s.
Though I am unfamiliar with a mandated Amtrak outright monopoly on inter-city rail service, I can’t say I have any expertise in this area. Michael Sol probably has a better understanding of this.
As an aside though, I would question the policy. One would think the government would attempt to encourage any type of inter-city passanger service by whatever means possible.
Finally, and only slightly off topic, I think this demonstrates the power of big gambling in Indiana. It cracks me up every time I see the billboards saying “Gambling benefits Hoosiers $4.5 Billion in tax revenue.” Even if Casinos are being taxed at 40%, that means Hoosiers have lost $10,000,000,000.00 to Casions. That having been said, if you want to have a nice weekend getaway, the hotel at West Baden (8th wonder of the world, adjacent to the French Lick) is a great place to get away and watch the local rail museum.
I hope they wouldn’t, either, but consider the North Carolina situation. NC DOT now owns most if not all of exx-Southern N-S line from the “triangle” down to Charlotte (most of it the route of “The Crescent”), and it provides station agents and publicity, but it’s Amtrak that must actually operate the trains.
Besides, who said the law was fair? Or that a government agency would not want to aggressively pursue its own “mandate”?