Like a lot of other days, their day is gone, never to return. Same as with covered wagons. Of course, all this relates to recent discussion of the possible reinstatement of passenger rail service to the Fox Valley. Everybody, including me, seems to be in favor of it. Anything's possible, but there is a real reason that passenger trains long ago stopped running between Green Bay and Milwaukee.
Railroads are businesses.
They exist to make money, not to provide something quaint and cute and old-fashioned. The reason that they stopped running is that they stopped making money. Now the head guy of Wisconsin Central Ltd., the state's biggest railroad, says that it would take something like 200 passengers a day to make it pay. And that after the federal government pays 80 percent and the state 20 percent of the cost of fixing everything and setting it up. It's difficult to sort out the numbers.