I was surprised that Pat Merrill agreed to go over to Amtrak. In my opinion, they do not exactly attract the best and the brightest in management. So he will be out of place there, because he does seem like a really good guy, knowledgable, honest, hard worker. Richard Phelps seems like a decent guy as well.

I don't know how the T&E crews are able to keep their chins up and enjoy their careers, when they've got such incompetence at the helm of the ship. My experiences with the engineers and conductors on Amtrak have almost always been positive (but not so with the on-board service personnel).

And by the way, it really doesn't matter who is President of the United States. A simple look back on history shows that Amtrak loses routes and has funding problems no matter who is elected into office.