San Francisco Chief,
Super Chief. The next day, Amtrak killed all of them except the
Empire Builder (and it killed the leg to Portland),
Super Chief, and
City of San Francisco (which was cut to three days a week). That’s a loss that’s hard to forgive.
Business analysts remember that the idea of a national passenger railroad was sold to Congress as a profitable enterprise, but it turned out to be a big money loser. Rather than a normal government agency, Amtrak was created as a for‐profit corporation with stockholders and, potentially, investors. The railroads were supposed to give it seed money based on the amount of money they claimed they had lost in the previous three years. After spending that to get started, Amtrak was supposed to make money.