Hi All,
I was listening to Jacki Lyden on NPR the other day, and she had an interesting segment on railways that haul freight in the U.S. She indicated these are private (not government); the railway companies make their own investment in the system. I do not know much about the freight system, but I would be interested in researching it, in order to have one more Libertarian argument when I hear folks saying that we need government-run MUNI, Amtrak, etc. The thought occurred to me that truckers are also private, and from what I hear a pretty independently-minded group.
Here are a couple of articles I found by Googling "private freight railway."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=freight-rail-back-to-the-future
http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362
Marcy