[Olog-hai]

That makes no sense at all. Canal companies were not so subject to “oversight”, nor were interstate shipping companies (that used the canals and other waterways whether by barge or other vessel) or stagecoach companies.

Furthermore, with hundreds of interstate railroad companies, there were no monopolies. Monopolization only manifested when the federal government imposed it—the main examples being USRA, Amtrak and Conrail. The Pennsylvania Railroad had major competitors for passenger traffic between New York and Chicago (very big during railroads’ heyday), those being the Baltimore & Ohio, the New York Central and the Erie, and many more competitors for localized destinations.

The notion that railroad companies in the USA ever became “too powerful” is propaganda advanced by pro-government types. Why? Because it was a threat to the notion of government centralization. Funny how the “solution” was to overregulate the railroads and overtax them so that they could not be “competitive” with the federal- and state-funded road network, is it not? (Don’t ever say “generally agreed” when it is not.)

[Alberta's Child]

Your first point is misleading. For one thing, canal companies were not subject to Federal regulation because most of them were either: (1) financed and constructed by governments, and (2) were built entirely within the borders of a single state. The Erie Canal is a perfect case in point. It was constructed in the 1820s along the route that still exists today because it was entirely in New York, and because it could be financed by corporate bonds underwritten by the major brokerage houses in New York City that operated under New York law. The Morris Canal and Delaware & Raritan Canal in New Jersey, and the Delaware 7 Hudson Canal in New York, were also constructed within the borders of their respective states.

You've completely overlooked a huge element of the railroad business, too. While railroads may have competed for passenger traffic between cities, any one railroad customer located along a railroad could only do business with the railroad that served the customer directly. The Pennsylvania Railroad couldn't haul coal from mines that were served by the Baltimore & Ohio, for example. This is a monopoly arrangement by definition, and Federal regulation of the railroad industry was implemented as a measure of relief and oversight for railroad customers who had no alternative means of transporting their products.

Conrail and Amtrak were not "imposed" on the industry. The Federal government assumed ownership of the assets of six major Northeastern railroads that had tumbled into bankruptcy and were about to be dissolved. For better or worse, the Federal government (correctly) believed that a disposition of the assets of these companies would result in the sale of their rights-of-way. In addition to the threat this presented to the industrial customers of these railroads, there was no way these rights-of-way could ever be re-established once the properties were sold off.

I don't know where you get this idea that these railroads ever existed as truly private entities at all. The entire industry owes its existence to massive government intervention almost since its inception -- from land grants, low-interest loans, and special preferential treatment by governments all over the country (exemption from property taxation, for example).