CORRIDOR — Train cars sit on the rail line that passes through Goulds, part of the former Pennsylvania Railroad that is being targeted for the implementation of a passenger rail connection between Chicago and Pittsburgh. -- Christopher Dacanay

STEUBENVILLE — Some Ohio Valley residents still remember when you could catch a train in Steubenville.

Those residents would have been familiar with the Pennsylvania Railroad, which operated thousands of miles of track from New York to Missouri throughout its lifetime. The PRR merged with New York Central Railroad to form the Penn Central System in 1968, amid a nationwide decline in railroad investment.

During the PRR’s height, it operated a consolidated rail line linking Pittsburgh to Chicago, with a southern route reaching East St. Louis, Ill. The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad would come to be known as the Panhandle Route, as a portion bisected the West Virginia Panhandle and crossed the Ohio River near Weirton to connect Steubenville and the Pennsylvania state line.

Following PRR’s merging and the later introduction of Conrail to revitalize certain failing railroads, much of the Panhandle Route would be either abandoned or repurposed. Beginning in 2000, the section from Weirton to Carnegie, Pa., would be converted into a 29-mile pedestrian and cyclist path — the Panhandle Trail.

Taking a train from Steubenville to Pittsburgh may be a distant memory now, but there are some who would like to see the Chicago-Pittsburgh corridor revived. And they’re gaining steam.

Once part of the Panhandle Route, the city of Fort Wayne, Ind., hasn’t seen passenger rail service since Amtrak rerouted its now-defunct Broadway Limited train in 1990. The city subsequently closed its Baker Street Station — opened in 1914 and now used as a banquet hall — and it currently holds the title as Indiana’s largest city without passenger rail.

Interest in restoring the rail service has likely been around since 1990, said Paul Spoelhof, Fort Wayne’s director of policy and planning. However, the last 15 years are when efforts really launched.

Fort Wayne has been a central partner of the Northern Indiana Passenger Rail Association, a coalition advocating for passenger rail service in Fort Wayne and its surrounding region, said Spoelhof, who serves on NIPRA’s board of directors.

“Higher density transportation modes have their place in the full mix of mobility,” Spoelhof said, adding that the U.S.’s investment in its highway system has “eroded” transportation options. “That limitation is a compromise to not only personal freedom but economic development and growth. We see the prospect of expanding passenger rail as adding to the mix of what options people have for moving from city to city.”

According to NIPRA’s website, the Pittsburgh-Chicago corridor has been a long-standing target for reintroduction, prompting a feasibility study and Tier I Environmental Impact Statement.

With assistance from NIPRA, Fort Wayne would apply for and receive a $500,000 grant from the Federal Rail Administration in December 2023. The grant covers step one of the FRA’s three-phase Corridor Identification and Development Program for planning proposed rail corridors.

Dubbed the Midwest Connect Passenger Rail Corridor, the proposed project would cross five states and connect a population of about 14.7 million individuals across its 545 miles between Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Midwest Connect has been approved for all three Corridor ID stages, which include developing a scope, timeline and budget; feasibility planning and preliminary engineering respectively, Spoelhof said. The coordination required for a Corridor ID project is “quite intense” and necessitates contributions from various local partners like the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and others along the proposed path.

One of those partners could be the Brooke-Hancock-Jefferson Metropolitan Planning Commission, which has contributed to early deliberations about possible Ohio rail corridors, according to Executive Director Mike Paprocki.

“Columbus is the largest metropolitan area without an Amtrak service or commuter rail service. It’s badly needed,” Paprocki said. “Around 2015, 2016, we started talking with people in Columbus. They started talking with (people) in Pittsburgh. It was like: ‘Where can we go with this?’ … With the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, then there became a big push because now money was available through the FRA to do these corridor identifications.”

Midwest Connect’s current proposed route was determined as the optimal route based on analysis of state and regional studies, according to NIPRA, which reportedly backs the route along with the Indiana Department of Transportation and other partners.

The route could still change depending on Corridor ID findings, Paprocki said, but this configuration is advantageous because a large portion of rail in Eastern Ohio is state-owned, so there would be no need for real estate acquisition.

Following the Panhandle Route’s large-scale abandonment in the early 1990s, Paprocki said, all Ohio counties between Newark and Steubenville collaborated to save the route, doing a tax abatement and letting the state purchase the length of rail.

That segment of the route is a “huge success story” and still a “very viable rail line,” although Jefferson County’s Gould Tunnel does have some height restrictions. However, Paprocki added, that doesn’t disqualify the route from possible high-speed passenger rail service.

The path through Eastern Ohio is clear, but determining how to get from Steubenville to Pittsburgh is going to be an issue. With the Panhandle Route’s West Virginia-Pennsylvania connection currently accommodating pedestrians and bikes, Midwest Connect could either cross the Ohio River like before, or it could take an existing rail line toward East Liverpool and continue to the Conway, Pa., rail yard before dropping into Pittsburgh.

This portion of Midwest Connect has been “examined the least,” with Pittsburgh being a relatively new addition to the corridor’s conversation, Spoelhof said. The path is not set in stone, and neither are some other parts of the proposed route, which is why planning is so important, he added.

The Corridor ID program will give insight into the location and frequency of train stops, as well as what kind of service they’ll see, high speed commuter or otherwise, Paprocki said.

Spoelhof said of possible stops and their services: “Understanding the purpose of trips between stations is really important. They help to define frequency and other things. So, understanding the relationship between Steubenville and Pittsburgh, Columbus and Marysville or Warsaw and Chicago (for example) is important as you’re doing the planning so that you can predict accurately what is going to respond to the demand (from potential users).”

Planning will look at what ridership demands currently exist and forecast what demands may exist in the future, Spoelhof said. To continue through each step of the Corridor ID program, results must show “it makes sense to keep planning.”

Most recently, on Aug. 1, Fort Wayne retained Kansas City-based infrastructure design firm HNTB Corp. to help implement the Corridor ID program. Spoelhof estimated it could take roughly 15 years before capital improvements begin, but “If we’re not talking about the future today, then we’ll never see that future exist the way we might imagine it.”