I don't know if this adds to the discussion or not, but one must remember that railroads were (are?) regulated to some extent as a public utility. We spent a week on the 1950's operation of the Rio Grande's Durango/Silverton line in a business class I had at Eastern Michigan University in the late '60's. The line was losing money by the bucketfull, but the D&RGW couldn't abandon it because it performed an "essencial service".