EAU CLAIRE, Wis. – The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to join the West Central Wisconsin Rail Coalition, which seeks to ceate a passenger commuter rail line going from St. Paul, Minn. to the Chippewa Valley and eventually on to Milwaukee and Chicago. It’s the route of the old Northwestern streamliners that claimed a 400-minute Chicago-Twin Cities timetable. The last of the 400s ran in 1963. The coalition chair, Scott Rogers, said the immediate goal is commute service from Eau Claire to St. Paul. A public-private partnership would run four daily round trips on the old Northwestern right-of-way, which now is operated by as a freight-only line by the Union Pacific. Rogers said passenger rail service would attract companies and skilled workers to Eau Claire
NOTE: The Chippewa Valley route is separate from a proposed Twin Cities-Chicago route via Winona. The Winona route would follow the old Milwaukee railroad’s Hiawatha service that competed with bthe 400s though Eau Claire. Both proposed routes would meet at Wyeville, Wisconsin — 60 miles west of LaCrosse snd 80 miles south of Eau Claire – ad share other railroads’ trackage across Wisconsin to Chicago.
400s. Eau Claire was on the 408-mile route of Northwestern railroad’s 400 from 1935 to 1963. The 400s switched from steam to streamline diesel locomotives and light-weight coaches in 1939 and occasionally hit 112 mph on straight-aways.
