There's something romantic about trains, but try getting the tracks to come to your house. When it comes time to unload the groceries, the romance of the train ends immediately.
Politicians love trains. Why? Because they can tell where the tracks go. They know where everybody's going. For policiticians it's all about control and power. Politicians hate cars because cars make people free. Not only free in the sense that they can go anywhere they want, which bugs politicians, but they can move out of the political district that the politicians represents.
Politics itself is nothing more than an attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit. That's the definition of politics.
~P.J. O'Rourke on Reason.tv "Where Was The Government With Studebaker