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Waterways are government owned, as are most roads, highways, and air and sea ports. Water and electric utility systems are a mixture of public and private ownership. Railroads seem to be the only major form of transportation or really national infrastructure in general that doesn't have some level of government ownership.

Since the United States gave massive land grants and other subsidies to promote the development of the railroad industry (including operating subsidies in the form of United States Post Office carriage contracts) how plausible would it have been for the state and/or federal governments to have simply built and operated the railroads themselves, or to have acquired them followed the railroad bankruptcies of the late 1800s? Were there any cases in which eminent domain could have been useful seeing as the United States Supreme Court didn't rule that private lands could be seized for private purposes that benefit the public until the 2000s?

Alternatively, how would the railroads have developed if the government hadn't given any land grants and other subsidies to the railroads, choosing instead to sell or auction off land to railroad companies which would still benefit the companies by allowing them to acquire most of the land needed from a single source? Might it have resulted in a more efficient railroad industry by eliminating the incentive for creating long winding pathways to maximize land grants and subsidies?
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