Amtrak was born in contro-versy, out of desperation, and amid competing goals. It was a child of convenience, the offspring of palace intrigue. A cast-off from desperately poor freight railroads, it was given little chance to prosper. Many myths surround the often-told creation story of the nation's passenger railroad. To look back from a vantage point of 50 years, Trains set out to examine those stories and question those myths. We reviewed contemporaneous accounts, retrieved records from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the Transportation Research Board, and government sources. Most importantly, we talked directly to those who worked behind the scenes at the U.S. Department of Transportation, the men who crafted the plan that gave birth to Amtrak.
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