This is an unpublished letter to a libertarian magazine, with a copy
of the equipment list from a 1967 GN timetable enclosed:
To the editor, Liberty:
Has Randal O’Toole the railfan emerged from his car culture closet?
(“Can Trains Be Saved?” Liberty, April 2006) Not completely; let me
indulge my “foamer” (rail industry term for trivia obsessed railfans)
proclivities by pointing out the 1950s Empire Builder did not open
all non-revenue space to all passengers; the full-length “Great Dome”
was reserved for Pullman passengers. For more non-revenue space in
Amtrak’s double-deck Superliners, let’s put glassed-in observation
lounges in the “transition” cars (to single-deck level), allowing a
view over the top of the train as on beloved but now almost by-gone
Vista-Domes. Long-distance travel was marketed as entertainment as
far back as the late 1940s California Zephyr of glorious memory.
Not so trivial is citing some unnamed government source alleging
negligible subsidies for air and highway travel, as if they were
creations of a near free market.
Nor is asking the wrong question.
Can highways and airlines be saved? See what happens when the cheap
oil runs out in James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving
the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, Although it
does not cite a single Austrian School source, it is surprisingly
insightful on currency matters and concludes that suburban sprawl is
the greatest misallocation of resources in human history, which will
not go on much longer.
Nor is expecting freight railroads to handle passenger trains, as if
rising traffic and shrinking plant had not obviated the rail
overcapacity problem a decade ago. The December 1975 TRAINS said the
traffic on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac could be handled