If you ask me, Webster City needs a passenger train to Chicago.

The last train, Illinois Central’s Hawkeye,* left Webster City for Chicago the night of April 30,1971. The next day, 182 passenger trains across America were discontinued, half of all trains remaining in service at that time.

Amtrak, the new national passenger train operator ran only one train across Iowa — The California Zephyr. It was, and is, a perfectly good train with everything you could want: coaches, sleeping cars, a dining car and a glass-topped lounge car. It runs daily between Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno, and San Francisco. You can board or leave the Zephyr at Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Ottumwa, Osceola, Creston or Red Oak.

That’s one train a day westbound, and one a day eastbound. For 3.24 million Iowans. Now, I don’t wish to ever be thought ungrateful, but this is not my idea of good train service. Today, Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Dubuque, Sioux City, Waterloo, Mason City, Ames, and Council Bluffs, have no passenger train service.

Saturday, May 10, was National Train Day, as good a time as any to imagine a better passenger train future for Iowa.

So here’s my idea. A new train would leave Fort Dodge every morning at 6 a.m. It would stop in Webster city just long enough for passengers to scramble aboard. Departure time would be, say, 6:40. After stops in Iowa Falls, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, and Freeport and Rockford, Illinois, our train would reach Chicago’s Union Station at about noon.

Plenty of time to get a cab to Wrigley Field, or Guaranteed Rate Field. Don’t blame me, I didn’t give it that name. To me, it’ll always be good old Comiskey Park. Wrigley Field was named for William Wrigley, then the team’s owner, so “naming rights” have been with us longer than we think.

Not up for a ballgame? Take the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry or Field Museum of Natural History. Or, go shopping on Michigan Avenue, stopping just long enough for a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza at Pizzeria Uno, where it was invented in 1943. Or a Vienna beef hot dog, introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and still available all over town.

If time or budget permit, you could stay the night. Hotel rates in the city can be alarming nowadays, but if it’s just one night and your annual vacation or a weekend get-away, maybe you could justify it.

But if one day is all you have, fear not. The train to Webster City leaves at 6 p.m. sharp. In 2025, dining cars are gone from short-distance trains like ours, but fear not, there will be one of Amtrak’s cafe cars in its place. A sandwich and a beer will set you back about $12, but where else can you look out the window at 80 mph at the same time? Isn’t that worth something?

We’ll have to sort out a few details before our train is ready to leave the station.

The station?

Well, we moved that to Wilson Brewer Park in 1971, so we’ll have to build a new one somewhere on north Des Moines Street close to the tracks. And we’ll have to negotiate with Canadian National Railways, successor to the I.C. They own the tracks to Chicago.

But this is still a modest proposal, not likely to cost more than a few Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Many states have been investing in more and better Amtrak service for decades, including Illinois, Michigan, California, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Massachusetts. Why not ours?

A train from Webster City to Chicago would save us from driving on constantly-under-construction interstates filled with texting-while-driving folks trying to set a new land record.

It would save us from flying in tiny planes with even tinier seats where a cup of (bad) coffee costs $3, and a change in wind direction can cancel your plans in nothing flat.

It would give us a safe, comfortable, civilized way to get to Chicago in all kinds of weather.

And it would be full of grateful travelers from opening day if you ask me.

*Hours of careful research failed to turn up evidence any American passenger train was ever named “The Cyclone.” But we can fix that right now. We’ll name the eastbound train “The Hawkeye,” and its westbound counterpart, “The Cyclone.” See you in the club car!

Robert E. Oliver is a freelance writer from Webster City who frequently contributes to the Daily Freeman-Journal.