The average 18 wheeler loaded at 80,000 lbs gets about 7 miles per gallon.

[Not Sure]

34. Much of it was duplicate track laid by competing railroads...

and most of those are consolidated into a few giant corporations. The tangled web of industries that abound in nearly every major city are either begrudgingly handled by the giant railroads or have been spun off to smaller Class II and III railroads (and even many of those have come under a common ownership umbrella). Those short-line and regional railroads often have a much smaller profit margin and many of them aren't union shops (as far as transportation employees are concerned).

Still, the vast majority of those rails are/were privately owned, constructed and maintained, so if they are vital to a railroad's bottom line, they will be maintained. It doesn't take much neglect for a railroad to become damaged, which greatly reduces operating speed, so those traffic lanes that are heavily used are also well maintained. Some state or municipal government owned lines are well maintained and others just barely pass the minimum standard. The former Burlington-Rock Island line between Fort Worth and Dallas is a good example of a municipal government owned line that supports a lot of passenger and freight traffic and is well maintained.

The railroads I run on are generally well maintained and there is a constant reinvestment into the vital routes. I think it's become apparent to most of the major railroads that timely delivery is about the only thing that matters for many of their intermodal customers, and good track is a key component to on-time delivery. Fort Worth is currently undergoing a major rail reconstruction project where many miles of track are being replaced or upgraded to reduce train dwell times. This not only gets the idling trains out of town so they aren't polluting the urban environment, it gets the freight to the customer faster. Trains use less fuel when they are operating at a constant speed, rather than accelerating and decelerating, so these upgrades will also reduce fuel consumption as well as pollution.