Amtrak was created in the early 1970s to rescue America's failing passenger rail system by bringing it under the control of a single quasi-governmental authority. Trains had been the primary means of intercity travel up to World War II, during which gasoline rationing filled many trains to standing-room-only. But passenger volume rapidly fell once the war was over, the automobile assuming primacy as a symbol of prosperity and mobility, a necessity for commuters in brand-new suburbs inaccessible by rail, and a commodity whose manufacture was central to the postwar industrial boom.

Nevertheless, a number of railroads continued to run passenger trains at a loss so long as they had a robust freight traffic to subsidize them. But by the end of the 1960s competition from truck freight, combined with inept management, spawned numerous bankruptcies (such as the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads, which merged to form the...