I think our philosophies are similar. The difference is in our understanding of the situation and how bad it is. I have come to the realization of what has happened and how bad it is, and you haven't.
All the talk about capitalism and free markets is not wrong, just doesn't apply here. I think of it very much like Pacific Gas and Electric. PG&E are not a good company. They have many failures and corruption, (although not as bad as railroads because people in California still have electricity, usually). When I see your defense of the railroads, in plain view of their utter and consistent destruction of US rail network, for me it's like this. This is a fake scenario, but very similar and actually happening right now.
Imagine if nobody did anything about PG&E, and let them do whatever they wanted to maximize shareholder value. Let's make sure the only metric we care about is maximizing shareholder value, and nothing else, nothing so mundane as actually providing electricity to Californians.
Then, (spoiler alert: some of this has already happened) imagine they petitioned the government to remove or relax standards for electricity reliability. Because maintaining 99% grid uptime is "not profitable". So they allow the standard to be that rolling blackouts, peak pricing and shutdowns, etc. are all normal. Then, imagine they failed to build any new power plants (investing in additional capacity is not profitable compared to just raising rates to reduce demand). Imagine they stopped maintaining their line right of ways altogether, or just decided to turn the lines off to prevent fires instead (more profitable that way). Imagine this trend of reducing service went on for 50 years.
One day, you take a trip from you home in Nevada to California, and realize they have no functional power grid. Everyone has standby generators, their air conditioning turns off during the day, if they can afford air conditioning at all, toaster ovens have been banned, and what's left of the power grid goes out daily, and electricity rates are $1/kWh. You realize, my God, they have no electricity in California, and it's like a 3rd world country. Wait, it's worse than that, because in the meantime, even third world countries figured out how to have electricity. And you remember last time you came to California 50 years ago, they had perfectly fine electricity.
Meanwhile, across the border in Nevada your electricity works reliably. You look into PG&E and find they have been making 50% profit margins off the remaining remnant of the power grid while investing nothing in maintenance or growth for the last 50 years.
In this scenario, what is your assessment of what happened to the power grid in California? My assessment would be that PG&E, and the government that let them do it, sold the California power grid down the river in exchange for piles of dividend checks, enjoying lack of any effective competition, and this is a despicable thing that's borderline criminal. Your assessment, if your opinions on US rail are any indication, would be that PG&E is a shining beacon of capitalism, heros providing a needed good to customers who need it, at a fair price by definition, and the fact that they are making 50% profit margins, while failing in their mission, means they are "doing well" since the government thankfully let them out of all their obligations in that messy business to actually provide first-world electricity to California. The destruction of the functioning power grid that previously existed in California was just a natural fact of life that couldn't be helped, despite the fact that California used to have a great power grid, scaled it and maintained it for decades to meet demand, all similar states and countries have managed to have reliable electric at reasonable rates and consider it a basic necessity if life since the early 20th century. Meanwhile, people in California who don't know any better think that reliable electricity is overrated, they "know" they can't have a reliable grid because California is special because of (made up absurd reasons), and it has nothing to do with PG&E failing, in fact they are thankful to PG&E for the remaining grid they have left. People who take the latter stance are some combination of ignorant, naive, brainwashed, or just not very bright. Or, they lie themselves because they have no individual power to change it, and moving on is easier than admitting the electricity situation in their state is so bad and hopeless.
And that's most Americans and US rail network. They are like future generations of Californians who won't even know what it's like to live where there's reliable electricity, unless they travel to Nevada one day and realize what they could still have.