Same here. Two big factors killed the railroads post WW II: union featherbedding and the government subsidized emphasis on building highways and byways for the automobile. Prior to WW II the nation was blanketed by a web of inter-urban and intra-urban railway companies, many of them very profitable indeed. Anyone objecting in principle to government funding of the railroads needs to justify similar subsidies for airports and the whole airline system, hydroelectric dams and the power grid, the Interstate, a zillion projects of the Army Corps of Engineers, and myriad other infrastructures bought and paid for by the taxpayer and used by private enterprise to make a "profit."
....good point...sadly some major cities have covered over their heavy rail trackage by building roads, convention centers, basketball arenas and the like over the old abandoned lines....once you lose a rail right of way it’s hard to get it back.