And then there are those of us who think, in hindsight, that having the private railroads confinue running their own trains, with Uncle Sam subsidizing the losses would have been preferable to what we ended up with. After all, what were the mail contracts but a form of subsidy? Those were taken away in 1967, and (big surprise) less than 4 years later the whole system was on the verge of collapse and Amtrak was born.

And to everyone who thinks Obama/Biden are going to shower funding on Amtrak, don't be so sure. These guys are politicians first, and are beholden to constituencies that may or may not give a s**t about Amtrak. My guess is that Amtrak will get a little more money, but it's still going to get treated like the red-headed stepchild.