Quote:

the state of New Mexico has purchased the ex-Santa Fe line from Dalies to the Colorado state line.

I heard that the sale fell through, possibly because the State realized that such a purchase would be biting off more than it could chew. The State supposedly owns everything from Belen to Lamy, but not north (east) of Lamy.

I don't think Amtrak would know how to begin to route the train via Amarillo. About the only thing they can do these days is merely maintain the status quo, and they do a questionable job at that. Maybe someone can explain why they have such an aversion to restoring the SUNSET between New Orleans and Florida. In my opinion, two routes that would make some kind of sense to restore would be Chicago to Florida, via Atlanta or Salt Lake City - Las Vegas - Los Angeles. But, again, I don't think Amtrak would have the slightest clue as to how to do that. All the competent people who knew how to pull stuff like that off are either dead (Jim Larsen, Graham Claytor) or retired.

It was brought to my attention that the latest systemwide engineers roster has fewer people on it than the previous edition. It's kinda hard to be in an expansion mode when you're scaling things back, isn't it?