There is an item, in Trains Magazine, that shows an early Amtrak network map, with pencil comments from Nixon counting up the number of politicians covered.

Who can tell me where to find it?

Given when the act creating Amtrak was passed, in 1970, I would look between late 1969 and early 1971. I know that's not very exact. Sounds like something Nixon would do. He allowed Amtrak to be created because it was assumed that all passenger trains would fade away, and Amtrak would only be around about five years, allowing the freight railroads a more graceful exit from the business than round-after-round of ICC permitted "train-offs". I remember early railroad club meetings I went to in that era as a kid. They were almost like going to a wake every month, with lists of last runs and coming service cancellations being a regular part of the general announcements.

Since the last time someone here adamantly claimed they saw what they were looking for "in Trains Magazine" and said article was actually in Classic Trains Magazine (and, as it turned out, it STILL didn't have the alleged quotation either), could I kindly suggest that you check your sources or memory again?

I say this because the historian side of me, keenly interested in the political shenanigans behind the formation of Amtrak, would have found any such alleged map, or ANY direct confirmation of input by Nixon, to be superbly fascinating. And I have read every issue of Trains from the first issue, and do NOT recall seeing ANY such map or mention of "notes" by Nixon.

There was a huge (by modern standards and type sizes) 12-page article on Nixon and his life around railroads by Don Phillips in the November 1971 issue, with details on past campaign trains, but no map. Amtrak takes up all of two scant paragraphs.

You are correct. I could be wrong. But if I knew the answer, I would not need to post it here.

The closest I could find is this (you need to make up a fake email address to see it, it doesn't actually send a link) but I can find no mention anywhere of Nixon spelling out which representatives/Senators would be covered on a map: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-amtrak

Here is the other article referenced: https://www.enotrans.org/article/amtrak ... t-of-1970/

Nixon was notorious for writing inappropriate notes he regarded as funny in the margins of memos and then sending them back. Kissinger leaked that, among other things, Nixon wrote "bomb them" in the margin of a memo about the situation in Laos, a neutral country, toward the end of the Vietnam War. So it is possible he did scribble something inappropriate on an Amtrak map, I just haven't found any evidence of it.

I saw that too. It may be that what I saw was not in the print magazine, but in one of the online articles. I searched on "nixon amtrak".

Five-six months ago, I was working on an article for the N&WHS Arrow on my memories of May 1, 1971. Since all the libraries in the area were closed and I could not get to the microfilm of the Roanoke newspapers, I thought, well, maybe I can find some details on Amtrak's forming in Trains Magazine.

I went through the bound volumes from 1969-1972 and was sorely disappointed in the lack of detailed coverage, I found nothing of any use in my article.

I was saddened that what I assumed would be excellent coverage turned into a very limited coverage.

Ken Miller

The most significant article I remember is the one about selecting the rolling stock, "All that glitters is not stainless steel".

Maybe it was in Passenger Train Journal?

Possible, even likely.................

.............. except PTJ in 1971 was very much an "insider" magazine, published quarterly, off the "radar" of most railfans, more apt to be read by lobbyist activists for passenger trains than by "railfans." Even most of the railroad archives are hard-pressed to find issues of this magazine before its revamped look, new "railfan" focus, and change to bimonthly publishing in late 1975.

Of course, it could have been a more recent article in PTJ...........

This bloomberg article has some interesting Amtrak / Nixon maps and comments.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-amtrak

I'm not a subscriber, so I can only see the lightly shaded article in the background and scroll through it. Doing a bing image search seems to show most of the images in that article, but I couldn't find one with the politician names.

Shouldn't come as any surprise.
Much like we currently have redundant (and expensive) space assets which mean jobs for certain politicians' constituents, but in the end cost way more than it should even though it's being sold to the public as a 'privatized' system.
Or think of all the horrible weapons and vehicles foisted upon the military only because they're built in some senator's home state.
Nothing new to see here, folks. Move along...