The ''Campus'' was a passenger train operated by

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

between

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metro ...

. The Chicago-Champaign corridor already saw two trains daily: the ''

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

'' (Chicago- Carbondale) and the ''

Panama Limited The ''Panama Limited'' was a passenger train operated from 1911 to 1971 between Chicago, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana. The flagship train of the Illinois Central Railroad, it took its name from the Panama Canal, which in 1911 was three yea ...

'' (Chicago-

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

). The ''Campus'' made a round-trip Friday and Sunday, serving the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

. A second train, the '' Illini'', made a Friday trip. The ''Campus'' first appeared on the November 14, 1971, timetable, the first timetable Amtrak issued with its own numbers. Amtrak discontinued the ''Campus'' and ''Illini'' on March 5, 1972. Both trains had used

Central Station Central stations or central railway stations emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as railway stations that had initially been built on the edge of city centres were enveloped by urban expansion and became an integral part of the ...

, which Amtrak was abandoning; Amtrak judged that the additional 35–40 minutes necessary to serve

Union Station A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...

made the schedule impractical.In fact, a re-launched ''Illini'' needed only an additional fifteen minutes to make the trip in 1974. The ''Campus'' was the last passenger train to use Central Station.

References

{{Former Amtrak routes Former Amtrak routes Passenger rail transportation in Illinois Railway services introduced in 1971 Railway services discontinued in 1972