A man's gotta scoot when a man's gotta scoot.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was spotted heading to New York today. On Acela. Now we'll never know whether he'd have taken the train even on a normal day for US Airways, but it's always nice to hear about high-powered people using Amtrak.

More cars for UK trains, thanks to Her Majesty

Britain's trains are running fuller than ever. Standee conditions are common on many commuter services. So the government has announced plans to buy up to 1,000 rail cars and lease them to the train operating companies.

Let's repeat: The government places the order and pays for the cars up front. Then leases them to the operators.

Literally from day one--when it took over a rag-tag fleet of legacy rail cars--Amtrak has been undercapitalized. Congress's habit of stringing the company along year to year hampers any ability to make meaningful capital expenditure.

Might this be one way to move forward--have DOT place the car order and lease the cars to Amtrak?

Or even--if you're one of those big privatization fans--put the fleet out for bids and see who comes forward with the best lease terms?

FRA says no to DM&E's new Powder River line.

Robert Novak's column today, "A Senator's Railroad No-Brainer," focuses on the project's champion in Congress, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

To review: "DM&E applied for the [$2.3 billion] loan guarantee under the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program to build and renovate a railway from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, across South Dakota and into Minnesota to carry coal, ethanol and other agricultural products."

This project was the subject of a previous post on this blog a full year ago. Your conductor can't help wondering if the outcome might have been different if there had been a passenger component to this deal. Remember, only 2 of the 48 contiguous states have no Amtrak service. They are . . . wait for it . . . Wyoming and South Dakota.