In the spring of 1971, the American passenger train was dying. Since their creation around a century and a half earlier, railroads had been a primary mover of both freight and passengers. But with the advent of the American highway system and the advancement of air travel, fewer people were riding the rails, and the railroads were losing money. The government wouldn’t let the privately owned companies just drop passenger service, so Congress came up with a solution: a quasi-public entity called the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, better known as…
