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What we're demonstrating is the ability to run passenger trains like this one:

This is Nashville's Music City Star. The engine is a refurbished AMTRAK passenger engine, costing about $200,000 used. The two gallery cars each seat 150+ passengers, and are available for about $20,000 each used. So this train has the passenger capacity of about six city buses.

The other interesting thing about this trainset is it's not clear which way it is travelling. It can run "backwards" with an engineer atop the back gallery car, controlling the engine remotely, or "forwards" with the engineer in the engine. The other crewperson is a conductor.

To generate support for this idea, we secured the cooperation of the P&L Railway and Miller Trailways for a one-day, invitation-only event. Early on Saturday officials gathered for a press conference at TARC:

Metro Council President Jim King, telling the press he's looking forward to being an "ordinary commuter" on the inspection train. (Can you spot the three CART boardmembers in the background?)

We boarded this brightly-colored train -

photo from the PAL website.
 

Photo courtesy Cliff Kuhl. We rode over to the railroad yard on a TARC bus.

Staff from Kentucky Railway Museum was on hand to manage the passengers

Mary Henry in white, and John Demming of KRM.

The passenger cars are generally maintained as mobile meeting rooms for railroad staff. Coming from a person who's only ever ridden transit trains, they're very well appointed

The other half of our trip was accomplished on a Miller Transportation Motor Coach - which is a fancy word for a tour bus. Miller provided a brand new bus with wheelchair lifts and wifi. It's a pretty comfy way to ride.

The purpose of this was two fold:

1. double our passenger capacity - everyone who rode the train did it one-way only, and took the bus the other way. That way we were able to take 100 instead of 50.
2. Highlight the ability of Miller or another carrier to run this route tomorrow. It's nice when you're planning mass transit, not to have to be suprised by the ridership. A public trial by bus is more accurate a predictor than doing population-based studies. IndyGO and Miller are currently doing this on their Indianappolis-Carmel line, and the farebox revenue is supplying 100% of the local match to federal CMAQ grants. Essentially, the locals are getting free public transportation.

Bob Owsley and the town of Cecilia really rolled out the red carpet for us. We had over 100 folks at this luncheon.

 
Barry Barker, Jim King, and John Yarmuth are forced to mug for the camera...

The engine comes through the trees in Cecilia

 
A prototype route map for the finished system.

Even more pictures at Flickr.

This is the ticker for P&L corridor news.

Conclusion:

You could almost see the wheels turning in people's heads: $60 million capital investment, with an 80/20 "New Starts" federal split, means $12 million local match, which makes this a quite affordable system. Compare to $250m for the Arena, and $4100 million for the Ohio River Bridges Project.

It would mean a lot to the Dixie Highway corridor to have a fast, congestion-independant way to get downtown. And it would be revolutionary to the small towns along the route like Vine Grove and Cecilia, where suddenly you could get to the big metropolises of Louisville and E-town without the expense and slowness of driving.