Here is what galls me about the whole "We need a businessman" line of reasoning. We need business people to run businesses, not government. I don't care if LD trains EVER show a profit and as Alan said, it's not even a drop in the ocean of government spending. So say you have a businessman, or woman, and they look at their budget line by line and think, "Hmmm.. this line is losing money. Have to cut it out." It's a valid statement as far as it goes but as applied to government it is so simplistic as to be irrelevent. For example, the business owner who generates waste, even toxic waste, will dispose of it as cheaply as possible without regard to the environment or human health, were it not for government dictating how the waste is to be disposed of. And if they do it illegally, we have funding to clean it up. Does that make money? No that costs money, a lot of it. But the advantages to the citizens outweighs all cost factors. Back to Amtrak. Little spending, little risk, big benefits. I don't need to outline the benefits of Amtrak to this forum!