The death of passenger rail in the USA is actually really pointless and sad. E.B. White discusses it in one of his essays. He writes it far better than I can, b

The death of passenger rail in the USA is actually really pointless and sad. E.B. White discusses it in one of his essays. He writes it far better than I can, but the gist is that it used to be that every freight train that carried mail, which was virtually all of them going most anywhere, had to hook up passenger cars too. The railroads lobbied to get this requirement dropped insisting that it was so expensive it was putting them out of business. Pure lies, of course. I've head there is a bit of a relict though. My understanding is that if you own your own passenger car and pay the switching and storage fees, then you can hook onto a train going wherever for a standard rate.