Committee will take up new Amtrak funding

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Whether Amtrak will receive the $1.2 billion it says it needs to keep operating will soon be in the hands of a U.S. House and Senate conference committee.

"Hopefully it will pass so we can operate without the concern of shutdown later in the fiscal year," Dan Stressel, a spokesman in Amtrak's Washington, D.C., office, said today.

Amtrak announced last February that unless it received $1.2 billion in appropriations, it would have to shut down long-distance routes to save money. President Bush requested $521 million for Amtrak in his 2002 budget...