urbanMSP

Implying private railroads weren't subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars in free land in order to build their networks.

Hey, not our Great Northern here in MN!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Nor ... ilway_(U.S.)

I never said O'Toole was smart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Nor ... ilway_(U.S.)

It says GN didn't use Federal land grants. States also granted land. In fact, while the company never took grants on it's own, the first paragraph of the Wiki you shared describes the company being formed from several existing railroads, one of which "only existed on paper as a series of land grants."

In fact the St. Paul & Pacific, which GN grew out of, had a number of land grants.

Also, for a railroad without land grants, they somehow managed to find nearly three million acres of land grant holdings to give up when the government decided to force land grant railroads carry military loads at half rates during WWII.

http://www.landgrant.org/forfeiture.html

I would assume he's an ayn randian "read Atlas Shrugged literally 1000 times" private train nut.

That was my first guess but I later found he has thrown some shade at a groups that are aiming to build Private passenger trains as well like Texas Central Railway intending to build a completely new route from Dallas to Huston with a journey time of about 90 mins and Brightline which is upgrading existing track to get from Miami to Orlando in 3 hours