Amtrak will return to Louisville,KY., in October, when the Kentucky Cardinal's run is extended across the Ohio river from its current terminus at Jeffersonville, Ind. The Last Amtrak train to call on Louisville was the Floridian, which ended its run in October 1979.

Work will begin next month on a $530,000 renovation of Louisville's Union Station, along with track improvements that will allow the Kentucky Cardinal to stop at at the Historic Stucture. the Evansville Courier & Press reported. the city has earmarked $300.000 for the project, while Amtrak will kick in $200.000. The Great American Station Foundation is Contributing $30.000 to the city's bus service, which will link with trains at the station.

Amtrak has been eyeing extending the Kentucky Cardinal's Chicago-Jeffersonville run to Nashville, Tenn. No decision is expected on that move until the end of the year, Amtrak spokesman Kevin Johnson told the newspaper.

I've always tended to think of Chicago - Nashville - Atlanta - Florida as being the biggest hole in the Amtrak system, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact I live along that (missing) train route...

Anyway, it's hard to see how the market for a Chicago-Lousville train could be better than the market for a Chicago-Nashville (or Chattanooga, or Atlanta) train. Perhaps "by the end of the year" Amtrak will present a timetable for the Nashville extension, but even then the train faces challenges. For one thing, it would be a dead-end train route, with no connections below Indianapolis. If you are not going to/from the Nashville area, you won't be riding - a finite (though significant) number of potential passengers.

I'm afraid to hold my breath on this extension, since we are still waiting for the Silver Meteor to reach Boston (announced for summer 2000), service to Maine, the Sunset restructuring, and others.

Yes, I agree that the most egregious gap in service is the Louisville-Florida corridor (served by the old autotrain Company before Amtrak, and I believe a train called the Floridian after 1970). But what about these gaps:

1. Maine. Yes, we've all heard that the "Downeaster" is supposed to start soon, but how soon?

2. Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon. Old Pioneer territory. If Amtrak can make the Southwest Chief successful, its hard to imagine that the Pioneer, or a version of that, would be too great a strain. It might even convince some that Amtrak was here to stay.

3. West Texas. An extension of the Crescent Star (which is yet to be definitely announced), into West Texas, connecting with the Chief somewhere like Lamy or Albuquerque.

There are other smaller things that seem obvious, such as running the train into Norfolk/Virginia Beach (one of the largest resort areas in the country), reviving the Atlantic City Express, returning the Sunset to Phoenix (and how about returning through service to Miami), extending Silver Service trains to Boston, and running daily trains (Sunset and Cardinal in particular). This is a lot to do right away, but this should start being worked on. Especially in the West, where airport and airplane troubles have been multiplying daily. It seems that Amtrak is doing everything in the NEC, but that's the only place that doesn't need work right now.

Oh, yeah, and they should adopt some kind of uniform look to their cars. There are six different paint schemes that I've counted floating around, plus separate California schemes. If they're going with Acela, make everything Acela. This is worse than the Rainbow Fleet.