Knowing the history of railroads, this comment is truly spit-take worthy. Railroads are my go-to example for what the "model" capitalistic industry looks like. Historically, the investment boom/bust cycles were driven in large part by railroad mania--most railroads in the 19th century were funded by public stock offerings to raise the capital to build them, producing and popping investment bubbles with almost decadal frequency.

At least in the US, there was surprisingly little public subsidy of railroads. The big exception is in the west, where many lines were financed in part by land grants, but this is not true all of lines (the Great Northern Railroad, for example, had no land grants)--and most of the railroads in the east has no land that could be granted to them at all. Antitrust laws in the US specifically originate from regulating the anticompetitive practice and local monopolies that railroads had. Indeed, many of those practices that motivated the law are now being repeated by airlines without a corresponding modern push to regulate those practices away.

Actual state ownership of the US is rare, both now and historically. The big exceptions are the temporary nationalization of the railroads during WWI and the assumption of the bankrupt Penn Central assets into Conrail (which was divvied up between CSX and NS in 1999). Of course, the US may be unusually competitive on the world scene for modern railroads, with US/Canada essentially three geographic duopolies (BNSF/UP, CP/CN, and CSX/NS).