Be careful what you wish for. Maybe the government should buy/seize the railroads, install the PTC (Let's see - how long the bidding process will take and cost will be?) and then operate them as open access. Anyone with Tier 4 locos can haul trains across the governmint lines paying a fee, hopefully the same rate per ton as commercial truckers!

I guess the engineers/conductors would have to be governemnt employees to be remain qualified - oh wait - I actually saw a quote where a railroad official said the trains would be operate by PTC/Trip Optimizer "freeing" the employee up to watch the track ahead and not worry about running the train.