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STURTEVANT— The Federal Railroad Administration awarded the Wisconsin Department of Transportation a $25.7 million grant to acquire new passenger rail cars for use on the Amtrak Hiawatha service.

The state will purchase three cab-coach cars and six coach cars with the grant, replacing equipment that is nearing the end of its useful life and costly to maintain, according to a DOT release Friday.

The department plans to add the equipment to the Midwest Rail equipment pool; a fleet of equipment already being manufactured for use on eight Amtrak Midwest routes.

Adding these additional cars to that pool will ensure that the Hiawatha Service will be fully equipped with state-of-the-art equipment from this fleet.

“This is great news for our passengers,” said Craig Thompson, WisDOT Secretary-designee. “The public will get their first glimpse of the new cars beginning late 2020.”

The new passenger cars will expand the train’s seating capacity.

The Amtrak Hiawatha is the busiest train in the Midwest and ninth busiest in the nation, serving almost 860,000 passengers in 2018, the release said.

Ridership has grown by 6% in the first six months of 2019.