Primary Content Caption The waiting area of Terminal Station in Macon. Until the 1960s, this is where passengers would have waited to board a train called the Nancy Hanks, running north to Atlanta or southeast to Savannah. Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB Stu Nicholson has been trying for decades without success to get Amtrak — or any other passenger rail service — to come to Columbus, Ohio. As director of All Aboard Ohio, a passenger rail advocacy group, Nicholson helped explore possibilities, like creating a new route from Chicago to Pittsburgh, with Columbus in the middle. But for now, Columbus, a city with 878,000 people, the second-largest city in the Midwest, has no passenger rail service. It doesn’t even have a station.