[Mr. Lucky]

Outside the Northeast corridor, railroad bridges are generally privately owned. Mainline bridges are well maintained. Most will accomodate a full length trains of 286,000lb. freight cars.

Do these Amtrak trains use a bridge not also used by freight trains?

[CatoRenasci]

Amtrak operates over the various carriers' rights of way.

When the railroads decided to get out of the passenger business in the 1950s and 1960's, they used to charge the entire cost of maintaining the mainline to the passenger trains that were on that route (e.g. Western Pacific's California Zephyr had to pay the entire cost of maintaining their main line from Oakland through the Sierras to Denver, the Coast Daylight and the Lark split the cost of the line from San Francisco to LA, etc.) It was a great way to show the passenger trains were losing money, even though they made money of a marginal basis and even if they were allocated only their share of maintenance including the freight traffic.