jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
There has been legislative changes in the recent past that would allow the likes of UP to participate in one of the various privatization efforts to apply to take over one or more of Amtrak's LD services. Of course there have been no takers since the freight railroads can make an order of magnitude or two more money using a slot to run a hot shot container train instead of a passenger train. So it is not the Amtrak enabling law that is the issue any more. It is the simple laws of economics.There is no mechanism for a railroad to pull out of Amtrak. Even if UP said, for some bizarre reason, that they wanted out of Amtrak, they couldn’t get out without a federal, legislative fix. The Amtrak law says railroads can operate specials and extras, but cannot operate regularly scheduled, intercity passenger service. So, UP’s steam excursions are fine, but running a regularly scheduled train is a no go.