I think there is an affect where nobody resisted regulation creep because nobody was building a lot of passenger train lines anyway.

There is something analogous with city center housing in Sweden. For decades not much was built. The population is fairly stable and many were moving to suburbs anyway. Today, not everyone wants a suburban house, and nobody wants to live in '60s concrete "housing project" exclaves, so central apartment prices and rents skyrocket. But now you cannot build the kind of central flats people want any more, because of decades of accumulated regulations about noise, sun angles, parking quotas, etc. The market is dominated by 50-100 year old buildings that predate the regulations and are very popular.

Same thing here in Boston--three story detached houses, with one apartment per story, are the most popular form of housing here, and yet have been illegal to build for the past 100 years (with a few exceptions) due to being too dense for single-family zoned areas and being a fire hazard. It's odd that there is no "build out of non-flammable materials" exception for the latter.

> The Federal Railroad Administration likes to think that America is special

The concept of "American exceptionalism" is a strange thing that still has lots of real-world consequences, apparently.

Sounds like a subsidy/payout to the steel making industry to me.