“Anything they’ll tell you is bulls_t,” Gunn told Railway Age in his characteristically frank, shoot-from-the hip manner.

Kemper Street Station, Lynchburg, Virginia. Flickr photo by Luke S.

One of yesterday's commenters pointed out that Railway Age, the trade magazine for the rail transportation industry, interviewed David Gunn after his being fired. The interview is in the late breaking news section of the website.

From the interview:

The Board members came in this morning and asked me to resign. I refused, so they fired me,” Gunn said in an interview this afternoon with Railway Age Editor William C. Vantuono. “I feel at least that I did the right, honorable thing. I wasn’t going to abandon our people.” He said that the Bush Administration’s people wanted to implement their plan, “which is destroying Amtrak.” “I stood in their way,” he said. “That’s why they fired me.”

Gunn, a veteran of the Santa Fe and Illinois Central railroads who made his mark in transportation by turning around transit systems in Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., and Toronto, spent the past three-plus years streamlining Amtrak’s management structure, improving financial controls, and implementing many state-of-good-repair programs on plant and equipment. “If you want an example of getting fired for producing good numbers, this is it,” he said. “It’s an upside-down world we live in.” ...

“Anything they’ll tell you is bulls_t,” Gunn told Railway Age in his characteristically frank, shoot-from-the hip manner. Citing the 93-6 vote in the Senate approving an Amtrak reathorization bill earmarking nearly $12 billion in mostly capital investment over the next few years, Gunn said “it doesn’t compute. The Administration is serious about taking this place apart.” ...

What happens next? “The Administration is running out of time,” Gunn told Railway Age. “They have to do a lot of the dirty stuff this year, because next year is an election year, and what they’ve got in mind will be very unpopular.” Gunn predicted that, within the next few months, “there will be a lot of train-offs and other service cutbacks.”
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There is also a discussion of the GAO Report on Amtrak referenced earlier.