Celebrate America - Past, Present, and Future - With The Saturday Evening Post

INDIANAPOLIS, May 28 /PRNewswire/ --

America's Rail Renaissance:

We Report On:

- How America went from having the best rail system in the world to one of the worst

- Why since the 1960's the nation lost nearly half of its rail infrastructure

- Why when Congress created a national transportation commission to recommend where the country should concentrate its resources in the future, the commission wasn't going to consider passenger rail

- How one man managed to get the national transportation commission to change their minds and include passenger rail.

- Should we have a national transportation system that includes passenger rail?

We Talked To:

- William Withuhn, former curator of Transportation at the Smithsonian National Museum of America History

"The reason America doesn't have a world-class passenger rail transportation system is because it hasn't paid for it."

"We've been hearing since 1971 that if Amtrak was reformed, got new equipment, or got rid of certain trains and routes, it would make a profit, it's all a crock. Passenger trains do not make a profit. Neither do roads or airport. That's not the purpose of transportation. It's national cohesion, it's about moving people where they need to be."

- Frank Busalacchi, National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission member and passenger rail champion

"When you look out 50 years with perhaps 100 million more citizens, it's clear you cannot meet the transportation requirements of this country with just air travel and highways"

Excerpt from "Waiting on a Train" by Author James McCommons:

Veteran journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains talking to the people who ride and work on the rails. In a Post exclusive, McCommons, part travel journalists and part historian shares his train journals as he travels from Chicago to New York and reports on why America needs passenger rail to get back on track. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/05/25/lifestyle/features/waiting-train.html

Railway Timeline from The Post Archives:

We searched our famous archives to report on the history of rail travel which reached its peak, carrying 1.2 billion passengers, in 1920. More history of train travel and how we covered it can be found at http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/train-archives

SOURCE The Saturday Evening Post