Bane
Train Attendant
I'm currently reading a book titled "The Men Who Loved Trains" and it's just very intresting to read about the whole PENN Central problem from an inside prespective. It seems to me a lot of these problems started and ended with the ICC. If the ICC was more liberal in allowing these routes to drop, but forced some trains like the Chief, Zephyer, Empire Builder, etc to stay on with goverment funding to help, would we need this large size of Amtrak? I can see Amtrak taking over the PENN Central routes in the NE Corrider and I still see other Private Class 1 railroads running their flagship trains. If this happened would we have seen better and faster long distance or even medium distance trains? Granted I wasn't around for the railroad crisis of the 60's and 70's but it is intresting to think this. If maybe we had more third demsional thinkers in the ICC would passenger rail had more prominate in the 80's and 90's? THoughts?