As rohr points out, it would be extremely difficult (read: impossible) to argue that the legislative intent of Amtrak was to fail.
Sure, realistically, we know that there were two camps behind Amtrak: The pie-in-the-sky idealists who genuinely thought Amtrak could be made profitable, and the cynical pessimists who went along with it to at least show the government
tried before it inevitably crashed and burned. Neither turned out to be right.
Thing is, the NRPC Act was clearly written by the idealist camp. You have the railroad stocks, legal procedures for initiating new services, etc. You also have subsequent legislation over the past 50 years showing Congress expanding many of those powers whenever it felt host railroads were being uncooperative. There is a lot of precedent for this.
For instance, in the 80s, Amtrak used
eminent domain (through the ICC and DOT) to forcibly purchase a portion of the Boston and Maine RR and resell it after falling maintenance standards forced them to suspend service. One of the points noted in the subsequent
Supreme Court decision in Amtrak's favor is that the act was almost immediately amended after the legal challenge was launched to specifically clarify Amtrak's use of the eminent domain power had been valid. The court saw clearly that congressional intent was on Amtrak's side.
Again, I think this has to be a stalling play on CSX and NS's part. The law is pretty clearly stacked against them.