Much has been written about Biden’s personal affinity for the nation’s only passenger railroad, which relies during a normal year on about $2 billion in federal subsidies. How Biden, as a young widower and first-term senator, rode Amtrak to and from his Delaware home so he could tuck his two boys into bed each night. How his years riding the rails put him on a first-name basis with Amtrak staff. How he announced his first presidential bid at the train station in Wilmington in 1987.

But less has been written about the substantive work the president-elect did to earn his reputation as the railroad’s most ardent backer in Congress.