HOW IT ALL BEGAN - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 22

Any one of those factors alone would have hurt; altogether
they were fatal. Some railroads had seen it coming and tried to
fight back, but one after another they all came to realize it was a
losing battle. At that point, the problem became how to get out of
the passenger business. It wasn't easy in those days before deregu-
lation. The same Interstate Commerce Commission that had been
created in the late 1800s was now a way of bureaucratic life for
the railroads. The commission approved requests for routes and
reviewed and approved the fares the railroads charged. Unfortu-
nately, from the railroads' perspective, the Commission also had
to approve whenever a railroad wanted to cut passenger service.
Usually that approval would only be given if the railroad could
demonstrate that there was little, if any, demand for the service.
And so the game began. Railroads allowed both their equip-
ment and their service to deteriorate in the hope that train travel
would become such an unpleasant experience that passengers
would turn elsewhere for their transportation. Certainly a lot
did, but for many unlucky souls, the train was the only way to get
where they had to go. (That's still the case today in many rural
communities, by the way, where an Amtrak train is literally the
only public transportation in or out of town.)
Gradually it settled into a standoff between the federal gov-
ernment and the railroads: the government refused to let the rail-
roads stop providing passenger service and the railroads refused
to provide more than the most basic service. The traditional
dining car soon gave way to dirty lounge cars, where vending
machines dispensed stale packaged food. Sleeping cars on over-
night trains were replaced with coaches, forcing passengers to
sit up all night—even those willing and able to pay for first-class
accommodations. It was a frustrating, maddening situation that
went on for years. And everyone knew that sooner or later, it
could only end one way.