> Remember the REA and the RPO and storage mail? Not to mention that you could ship items in the baggage car including coffins. The loss of the mail in particular doomed many passenger trains since the mail profits were mitigating the passenger losses.

Some clarifications: what did in many of the low patronage passenger trains when the RRs ran passenger service was the discontinuance of open pouch RPOs, the RMS (railway mail service) ones where US Postal employees sorted the mail inside the cars and picked up/distributed enroute (and you could get cancellations). In one form or another, closed pouch mail service, what is now referred to as "storage mail", continued well into the 1990s on Amtrak. As of 5 years ago, you could still ship remains (a coffin) via Amtrak, provided the train has a baggage car.