My full-time job is based in the railroad industry. It's not cheap to maintain a railroad, usually $1mil per mile as the bare minimum (40mph track speed, welded rail), and more if you want higher speeds. Sgnalling (as opposed to "paper" authority) is more. Passenger rail usually gets the cat's ass in terms of funding, and they don't hold back on the all the frills. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge proponent of passenger rail, but it has it's merits.

The downside is that we should have taken Europe's excellent rail system as an example in the US, and masked off land for a dedicated rail system, decades ago. We are somewhat overpopulated & spread out to make it happen without some serious eminent domain issues these days.

Here in Fort Wayne, they held a local forum/symposium of sorts trying to get more people on the bandwagon for bringing passenger rail back to the area. It was relocated twice in the past 15 years, further & further north. Folks from the 225,000 population of Ft. Wayne now have to drive some 30 miles north to Waterloo, IN in order to catch a train to Chicago...or points east. Fort Wayne is solely a freight town now, despite it's size.