Yeah - I agree with your statement Jim - when I took the Canadian, I think we passed ONE CN train. The rest we went into the hole for. We weren't very late either - only 2 hours late at our latest.
When I take Amtrak (fairly often, actually), it's very rare that we get sent into the hole - on the CL a few months back, we were clean and clear nearly straight through, only stopping for track work near the Continental Divide, and on the Northeast Regional I usually take WAS-NFK, we've been stopped only once in my memory, and that was due to nasty - as in tornadic - weather. Honestly, as much as people complain, Amtrak has it pretty good - it's big enough and has enough political support, unlike VIA, to push around the freights, and out East, it has the fact it does dispatching for CSX and NS on the very high traffic sections of the NEC, which CSX and NS would very much like to have timely usage of. In my experience, the primary thing Amtrak suffers from is track work, and the freights suffer from it just as much.