Background
Following the massive bankruptcy of the Penn Central in 1970, Congress created Amtrak to take over the failed company's intercity passenger train service, under the Rail Passenger Service Act. Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 (the "3R Act") to salvage viable freight operations from Penn Central and other failing rail lines in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and midwestern regions, through the creation of ConRail. ConRail began operations in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Railroad Revitalization And Regulatory Reform Act
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)