There were a few interesting footnotes in the history of rail passenger service at Amtrak's creation. In addition to that related above, the Southern, while holding out, let one of its subsidiaries, the Central of Georgia join Amtrak, to rid itself of its portion of the City of Miami.
Another holdout was the Georgia Railroad, which went on to operated a few mixed passenger/freight trains for a few more years, mostly from inconvenient freight yards, on unreliable schedules that appealed only to railfans of that era.
Another tidbit was what were the four original common stock holders of Amtrak at startup? (I believe the US DOT was the sole 'preferred stockholder').
IIRC, they were the PC, BN, MILW, and GTW.
IIRC, I think there
may have been a few more shareholders at the start This is, of course, obscured by the fact that the common stock is now broken up between BNSF, CP, CN, and American Premium Underwriters (the corporate successor to PC).
With SCL, my understanding is that the
Florida trains were profitable...but they were probably losing money hand over fist on enough of the side/other routes to force the drop. It is also possible that they had gotten stuck with enough redundant trains on part of the system post-merger to cause a headache (I'm thinking possibly some of the mail locals were still stuck in train-off fights). I would point out that as late as the mid-70s, there were still
five Northeast-Florida trains running daily in peak season:
-The Silver Meteor
-The Silver Star
-The Champion
-The Vacationer/Florida Special*
-The Auto-Train
That's a
lot of demand to be filling; honestly, it might well have been as much as half of the LD system's ridership at that point. I would also point out that these weren't the "small" trains we see today...the Meteor and the Champion, IIRC, both ran in the 12-14 car range as demand dictated (and when combined, you got a massive 26/28 car train in '79).
The other thing weighing in favor of SCL's passenger profitability is that IIRC, they were still building stations and whatnot into the late, late 60s. While I can accept an argument that they might have been "spending money not to lose money", I'm hard-pressed to see any of the RRs putting in new stations of their own volition later than the early 60s if they didn't have at least some profitable operations.
*I think this wore different names in different years.
Moving on, IIRC Santa Fe tried to get permission to discontinue all of the trains that Amtrak didn't want (such as the ex-Grand Canyon) and simply continue to operate the remainder themselves.
George:
You are
absolutely right that jacking up coach fares would lose lots of business. What I offered was strictly a mathematical if-then statement, nothing more, and
certainly nothing on the viability of doing so. If you could do X, then Y would result does not imply that X could be done. Sorry if it came across as though I was George Warrington there.
As to the division of the cost point, that
is true. However, a counter does appear insofar as Tri-Rail "should" eat part of facilities maintenance in South FL, as should Sunrail in Central FL, the NERs in VA, and a whole host of commuter lines north of Fredericksburg. I would also point out that as far as the tracks go, that would
also divide with the freight trains...and the cookie jar accounting could be "done up" to put most of that on freight cars easily enough...and that Amtrak gets a substantial benefit of its own on this front as well.