Peter Maurath, in our last issue, took his TAMR column into the realm of Amtrak, requesting his readership to express their feelings regarding our National Passenger Rail Service (Amtrak). He got two replies and was a bit concerned by the low turnout on the topic. The two comments he got were full-bodied enough to suggest that those who think on the topic tend to get a bit hot under the collar. I think many people have plenty to say about the topic, but they don’t want to say it out loud.

Peter’s a good kid, so when he opened the forum to one and all, I decided I’d weigh in right here, because Amtrak is an issue that affects model railroaders. Even those who don’t have an Amtrak-only pike may have Amtrak service passing through. The reason for that is because Amtrak, the prototype, passes through quite a bit of America. The fact that it passes through in the middle of the night and is often late is a testimony to another problem, one beyond the reach of Amtrak.

Back when Amtrak was created, America created two public corporations within that time frame: Amtrak and the US Postal Service. Both were wholly owned by the United States Government and both were charged with a requirement to become fiscally solvent. USPS succeeded in that; Amtrak never did.

Back in 1971, I recall thinking that a public corporation was a really stupid idea, and I haven’t changed my thinking in all that time. I won’t take up column space to vent about how the USPS managed to turn a profit and what it cost the rest of us, but the removal of mail contracts from railroads was a very big reason for the collapse of passenger rail service in America.

So stay with me while I proceed to take Amtrak apart my own way. Being an editor, I propose to take it apart by syllables. You’ve got your “Am” and you’ve got your “trak.” The first one refers to America, the place, the people, and the government. It’s all fine to point at France or Germany and say how nice their passenger rail service is when each nation is about the size of one of our states. America the Place is huge. Serving this vast expanse with any passenger system is going to be a study in Herculean distances. The Northeastern Corridor is closest to being like a European concentration of stops and so, of course, someone wants to make it independent of the rest. Any successful government enterprise is a bank waiting to be robbed, and that corridor is certainly tempting.

The rest of Amtrak, to hear the Administration’s view of it, is low-density junk. Give it to the states. That junk is the best public transportation alternative for a lot of places in America, and it connects those places with the rest of America. If interstate Amtrak has such low-density, why are so many of the trains booked full or close to it so far in advance?

America the place clearly needs Amtrak; the people obviously want to ride, so the problem must be the government. Because of the stupid public corporation concept, Amtrak is always going to be at odds with its government. On the street outside my house are streetlights. No one expects them to make a profit. They are public works, there to provide a public service. It costs me tax money to have them in place and lit up at night, but I figure it’s worth it. Ask America if it’s willing to pay an Am-tax for Amtrak.

The other part of my disassembled Amtrak is the Trak. Ribbons of shiny steel. Amtrak owns most of the track it runs in the Northeast Corridor, another reason that portion is worth stealing; it has tangible value. The rest of Am’s Track is either a few lines of servicing facility rail or else it is borrowed from the freight railroads. When Amtrak is two or three hours late, what is the usual reason? Some sort of mishap on the freight side of things. It could be a derailment or a grade crossing incident. Then too, some dispatcher may have shuffled the Amtrak train into “the hole” and left it there.

Freight railroads don’t maintain their track for their Amtrak visitors, and they aren’t especially pleased to have to share limited track space with a passenger carrier. The Northeastern Corridor has shown us that Amtrak can run at 150 mph if it can maintain the track to its standards and eliminate grade crossings. The rest of Amtrak has shown us that a railroad can exist without owning its own track. Freight railroads really don’t want to look at that notion, and Amtrak is an unwitting lab rat in this experiment.

Since the B&O was founded in 1827, American railroads have worked with one common understanding: Railroads run on their own tracks, laid on their own land. Amtrak outside the Northeastern Corridor flies against this thinking, and it has worked. I recall that misty time around 1972, hearing old guys say that Amtrak wouldn’t last twenty years. They pounded the desk and said Amtrak would fail because it didn’t own the track on which it ran.

Amtrak didn’t fail, it’s still here, and it’s still strong. That’s why David Gunn was fired and Amtrak has to go, because it is a railroad that survives on track it doesn’t own. If Amtrak can do it, so can all the other railroads. We the people own the highways, and we own the airports. We can own the track, too. Just as Amtrak pays fees to run on other people’s track, every other railroad can do the same thing. Amtrak is a noble experiment; it’s time we learned from it.