Harrisburg Line: Why Amtrak?

This forum may not be correct one for this question, but I am curious why the Harrisburg line ended up with Amtrak rather than a Commonwealth-level organization when the old railroads were jumbled in the post-PC era. The line exists completely inside the Commonwealth so it could easily have been assigned to an agency in Harrisburg, maybe even the DOT. I am not sure I'd advocate SEPTA owning it, but they certainly run more trains on the line's eastern end than Amtrak.

Governor Shapp fought to keep the Philly-Harrisburg PRR/PC line under state or regional authority control when Amtrak came into existance, but Amtrak insisted that it was long distance rather than commuter, and therefore came under Amtrak.

if septa ran it it would've been discontinued by 1981

It would be nice to see SEPTA service to at least Lancaster. If I'm not mistaken, SEPTA crews are certified to CORK (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

The Keystone has terrible service right now. Amtrak is almost hourly, but not quite, with service stopping early in the evening. It would be nice to see Amtrak stop serving the smaller stations and having SEPTA pickup the slack at those stations. Its a shame to see that vast ROW with hardly any trains past Paoli, not to mention the Amtrak trains are packed. They either need more service or more capacity, neither of which they seem to want to provide.

SEPTA crews are only required to be qualified as far west as Caln interlocking (a little west of Thorndale station) on the Harrisburg line. We used to have to qualify to Cork, that was at least until Amtrak began their track impovements up there. I guess Amtrak didn't want a set of Silverliner II's crapping out on the main while they were single tracking.

I guess Amtrak didn't want a set of Silverliner II's crapping out on the main while they were single tracking.

Nice. We're doing that good. Well you guys should have it made when the S-V's show up, right?

Well the way transit in this area is going, I'm not expecting any forward thinkers to send SEPTA past Thorndale again, but I think it would be a hec of alot cheaper than creating another agency just to run trains from Lancaster to Harrisburg (see thread in Amtrak forum).