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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] I don't believe you understood my point.  I was not including the track because it's usually leased access.  I was refering to the cost of stations and employees or contractors who are being paid to serve the passengers of one train per day.  That is very inefficient.I guess I should have equated it to a road with a trucking company owned gas station that serves one truck a day, and a company owned restaurant that feeds only one vehicle's occupants a day, etc.I would include the track in that equation only if Amtrak owned it.  I intentionally did not include the direct costs associated with actually moving the train, but only the costs that are incurred whether the train runs or not and therefore are totally assigned to the one train when they should be divided among several trains a day.[/quote]If a passenger train operator (Amtrak) contracts with a freight railroad to run its trains over the freight operator's tracks, it usually pays the freight carrier a rental, which is an operating expense.  It flows through to net income or net loss.If the passenger train operator buys new equipment or upgrades existing equipment, i.e. locomotives and cars, it is a capital expenditure, unless the upgrade of the existing equipment does not extend its useful life.  This would be highly unusual.  The cost is capitalized and depreciated over the life of the asset.If the freight train operator upgrades its right of way, i.e. adds passing tracks, new signals, etc., and pays for the improvements, the cost would be capitalized on the books of the freight carrier and reflected in the rental charges to the passenger carrier.  If the passenger train operator pays for and owns the upgrades, they would be capitalized on the passenger carrier's books and depreciated over the life of the asset.  The same accounting would apply to new support facilities, i.e. stations, parking lots, etc., although another complexity can enter the picture.  Frequently, as is the case in Wilmington, Delaware, the station is owned by a city, and the upgrades are made by the city.  In this case the passenger carrier usually rents part or all of the facility.  The rent is an operating cost and flows through to the bottom line.If the passenger train operator increases the number of trains from one to three or five per day, the fixed costs per unit of revenue, assuming the increased in the number of trains generates a corresponding increase in revenues, decreases.  This is one of the reasons an airline like Southwest is so successful whereas Amtrak, outside of the NEC, Illinois, and California corridors, is a financial disaster made even more so by running a train three days a week.  Spreading the fixed costs over more revenue seat miles lowers the attributed fixed cost per mile.
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