Amtrak at Milepost 40

The Swedish X2000 runs through the yard of Washington DC in 1993.

The California Zephyr en route to San Francisco in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado, in the 1990s

Amtrak, or the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, came into being on 1 May 1971, created by the Nixon administration to run long distance passenger trains in the USA that were previously operated by the different private freight railways. It now operates passenger services on 21,000 miles (34,000 km) of track connecting 500 destinations in 46 states and three Canadian provinces. In the 2008 financial year Amtrak had 28.7 million passengers, representing six straight years of record ridership. Amtrak stills suffers from underfunding, however. A 40th anniversary book is being published next month.

As mentioned in a previous post, National Train Day is this Saturday. Amtrak 40th website