New coaches, additional seats coming to Hiawatha service

The Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha service is expected to gain additional passenger capacity this Fall, when the first of nine new Siemens “Venture” coaches are scheduled to enter service.

Their arrival will begin to rebuild seating capacity lost in March 2025, when Amtrak pulled older, 1980s-era “Horizon” cars from service after corrosion was discovered in the cars’ bodies. Their removal affected both the Hiawatha and Chicago-Milwaukee-Twin Cities Borealis services.

Once all nine cars are in operation, trains will have seating for 388 passengers and nine bicycles, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

In a prepared statement, WisDOT officials said the agency “is excited that the new cars are being prepared to serve on Wisconsin’s Hiawatha route,” whose car fleet is managed via the Midwest Equipment Pool. The pool is a collaboration between Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin, which jointly own and operate the Venture cars and Siemens “Charger” locomotives on Midwestern state-supported routes.

By keeping the new cars in Hiawatha service, other cars in the multi-state fleet may be freed for use on other state-supported services in the Midwest, WisDOT officials said.

Three of the new coaches are “cab” cars, meaning that in addition to seats, one end is a control cab for the engineer so some Hiawatha trains will no longer need a trailing locomotive. (Cab cars are standard practice on commuter train systems like Metra, Virginia Rail Express and NJ Transit, among others.)

WisDOT ordered the additional cars in 2021, a year after Venture cars began operating on Midwestern routes in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Those states, in conjunction with California, had jointly placed the original order for 88 Venture cars in 2017, ending a saga that began in 2012 when they placed a $551 million order for 130 bi-level cars with Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (Sumitomo). That order was delayed after a prototype car built by Sumitomo subcontractor Nippon Sharyo failed a crucial safety test in September 2015.

Sumitomo then re-subcontracted the order to Siemens, which by then was already building similar cars for Florida’s Brightline service in preparation for its January 2018 launch.

Eighty-eight Venture cars came to the Midwest, 49 went to California.