Whens the last time Louisville had rail service?

Anne and I were looking at the possibility of taking a train up to Chicago to visit family. As it turns out rail takes longer than driving and is more expensive than flying. I found it really strange that in order to take Amtrak we would have to take a bus(included in the rail fare) up to a town on the northern Kentucky border to meet the train. When was the last time Louisville had regular rail service? Where was the station? Was it one of those beautiful,grand stations,if so it is still around?
Admittedly I am a bit of geek and I still think trains are neat.

From the looks of it, there was Amtrak service to Louisville as recently as 2003.

The trains arrived at Union Station.

According to the first wikipedia link, "The train was handicapped by inconvenient departure and arrival times and slow travel times, especially on the segment from Indianapolis south to Louisville. This segment was operated over the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, which had purchased the line from Conrail in 1994, and had a speed limit of 30 miles per hour (50 km/h) over most of the route due to its jointed rail. This made travel on the Kentucky Cardinal slower than automobile traffic on the parallel Interstate 65."

I'm a bit of a train geek myself. In fact I worked for the C&NW for a few years in my misguided yoot. I agree it would be neat to have commuter service into Kentucky, but at those speeds you might as well walk.

I suspect the fact that Louisville is so accessible by plane and road contributes to the lack of trains. They simply can't compete.

Sorry for the second reply, but here's another link to Union Station.

I'm amazed at how church-like the station seems. It's a testament to Louisville that this landmark wasn't torn down in the name of progress, like train terminals in so many other cities.

Hey you kids, get off of my lawn!

John

I don't know the details or where it stands in terms of feasibility but Louisville was identified as part of the "high speed rail" network currently in the planning stages. Looking at the map the L'ville corridor would connect to Chicago via Indy. Here's the first link I came across, don't know how good it is in terms of info other than it shows a map of proposed corridors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/1 ... 67804.html

I was so used to using trains on the east coast that it didn't occur to me there would be no train service when I moved here. It it such a relaxing way to travel.