Why are US trains generally silver?

[jamesontheroad]

A key factor to be considered is that Amtrak has very little capacity for long term financial or strategic planning. It has to go cap in hand to Washington every year for federal funding.

The basic funding mechanism for Amtrak is flawed, as airports and airlines are in receipt of equal if not greater subsidies per passenger through long term infrastructure projects (airports, etc). Threaten to take that away and everyone howls in protest, but suggest increasing Amtrak's subsidy and the right wing conservatives condemn you for being a socialist and anti-capitalism.

Note that while Amtrak (public) has to run on mostly private rails, most airlines (private) serve publicly owned airports. It's very unusual for an airport authority to be in private ownership, such as in the UK. Hence, private airlines using public infrastructure have a distinct commercial advantage over a public train service using private infrastructure, both in terms of cost but also reliability.

 

[jopsuk]

Regarding (going back a bit!) unpainted aircraft- the AA unpainted livery was of course polished aluminium, not stainless steel.

The green colour of an "unpainted" Airbus (and modern Boeing as well) is an anti-corrosion primer.

Even going without that, so many of the flaps, covers, doors, hatches, winglets etc on a modern aircraft are carbon or glass composites that an unpainted aircraft would look like a weird patchwork, even with attempts to match the colour and lustre using paint.