Well we surely would be sorry to see any train go. This train, however, has been arriving at Louisville Union Station sometimes with more crew members than passengers. The city of Louisville fought hard and successfully to get the train extended beyond Jeffersonville, IN (of all places!). Jeffersonville was the original endpoint because that is where the facility (UPS or USPS, not sure) was that gave the train its express contract.
The extension into downtown Louisville, while only 5 more miles, was considered to be the precursor to bigger and better things. Nashville loomed next down the line, a run of several hours on relatively good CSX track (an oxymoron there?). The run could have been done using the existing equipment, which just ties up for the day in the Louisville/Jeffersonville area. And advocates beyond Nashville saw Alabama, and eventually Florida, in their sights as well.
Taking this away would only make it more difficult to reinstate it, and to get those incremental extensions made so that Chicago and the Southeast can be served on a one-seat ride.
The Kentucky Cardinal has certainly gotten poor treatment in its relatively short life. Its sleeper has been yanked away, put back, and yanked away again, sort of like taunting a toddler with his favorite toy. So how they could do business with the public not knowing whether the train would be carrying a sleeper is beyond me. The train started out with Superliner equipment, and the Superliner sleeper was borrowed in the summer to be used as a short-turn sleeper on the California Zephyr between Chicago and Denver. Its other cars were routinely borrowed for other trains.
There were reports of the train arriving in Louisville with two engines and a coach, or two engines and a sleeper (the express cars having been left at Jeffersonville). Seems pretty overpowered for one car, but think that even the one car was not filled up. And whatever coach passengers there might have been got a free upgrade since there was at times only a sleeper available for them. Likewise, sleeper passengers, if booked as such would have been downgraded to the only car on the train, a coach.
Then the train was downgraded to single-level equipment, This followed the Auto Train and Capitol Limited wrecks, which required the reassignment of all Superliner equipment from the Cardinal and Kentucky Cardinal pool to other trains. The train was originally supposed to have one Viewliner sleeper, but again that was yanked away when the parent Cardinal also needed to fill out its new look.
That all said, there is a 180-day rule that notice has to be given for a route discontinuance. If this train were ending on December 29th, notice would have had to be given by the end of this past June. Perhaps they will start the notice on 12/29 and end the train next June? And if all that happens, look for them to treat this unwanted stepchild even worse. Remember when they were killing the Lake Country Limited in Wisconsin? Six months of Saturday-only service, and in the wrong direction whereby even railfans could not possibly patronize the train unless they lived in Janesville.
So, it would be a shame to lose this train, but judging by the passenger counts, the weakest link had to go first. I feel bad for those who fought to get the train extended from Indianapolis to Jeffersonville, and then the people of Louisville who fixed up their station (it had long been converted into a bus garage) to once again accomodate trains. I feel it probably will survive between Chicago and Indianapolis, only because Amtrak needs to have that funeral train running to ferry bad-ordered and wreck-damaged equipment to Beech Grove.
Funeral train? "Hospital Train" would indicate that the patient is being attended to and repaired. Beech Grove has unfortunately become a final resting place for Amtrak equipment since nobody is fixing it. But that is another story.