A difficulty for passenger railroad enthusiasts (like me) is that a good car can compete with a train on a fuel economy basis.

On complicating factor is that people foolishly replace their cars quite frequently, so the automotive technology that is deployed in the fleet at a given time is perhaps only five years old on average, while trains represent large capital expenditures and are expected to last longer.

It will be very interesting to see how the cars-versus-trains competition plays out as fuel costs rise. As a baseline data point, my Honda Insight gets 3.3 l/100km, using 1999 car technology. With two passengers, that's 1.6 l/100km/passenger.