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I have read the Land Grant Acts.  None of them contain any language demanding the grantees  provide telegraph and railroad carriage services to the government at below market or below cost rates.  The Acts stipulate as a condition of the grants that the railroads give the government a rate break, but not below cost, if their earnings exceeded a formulated ceiling.  Here is a real life example of how a western railroad is still benefiting from the Act.  My employer wanted to build a western coal power plant in west central Texas.  The coal was located on lands owned by BNSF.  To get to it we would have had to pay for a spur line to the coal face, pay BNSF to transport the coal to the power plant, and pay a subsidiary of BNSF for the mineral rights.  The cost would have been hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the contract.Whether the benefits of the Act accrued to the parent company or a subsidiary is immaterial. The financial results of a subsidiary company roll up to the parent company.As an undergraduate student I took several transportation economics courses.  It was a long time ago, but as I remember the discussions of the impact of the Land Grant Act, it was agreed that the railroads were a net beneficiary.  Amtrak's supporters talk extensively about the subsidies received by air and highway interests while overlooking the subsidies received by the railroads.
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