A train whistle blared just as Marc Magliari answered the phone, obscuring the Amtrak spokesman’s words.

A hokey special effect in the Amtrak office? Not hardly.

Magliari was actually aboard an Amtrak train pulling into Milwaukee, where he planned to show visiting St. Louis officials an example of an “intermodal” hub for bus and rail. St. Louis is building a similar Amtrak station.

Things are looking up at Amtrak, the federally subsidized passenger rail service, and for passenger rail in general.

Four-dollar-a-gallon gas and shrinking airline service are combining to push people all over the country to take another look at rail.

Average Amtrak ridership is up 11 percent so far this fiscal year. That includes an 18 percent leap in passengers on the overnight Capitol Limited train, which stops in Cleveland on its way to Washington, D.C.

Traditionally, Amtrak’s trains haven’t done well outside the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor. It’s one reason why penny-pinching lawmakers repeatedly put Amtrak on a starvation diet, leaving it hard-pressed to expand service in recent years, or even keep all existing railstock running.

But last fiscal year, Clevelanders boarded Amtrak trains at a 6 percent faster clip than they did in 2006 – for trains that came and went in darkness. The number of Cleveland passengers was 22 percent higher this May over a year ago, statistics provided by Magliari show.

That doesn’t mean Amtrak is the answer to high-priced Middle East oil.

Even with the most costly gas in U.S. history, rail is still not often the cheapest or easiest option, compared with taking the car or flying.

The cost of a train ticket could soon grow more, since even Amtrak is not immune to sky-high diesel fuel costs. Most of its trains outside the East Coast run on diesel-generated electricity, Magliari says.

Yet 139 years after the first golden spike was driven into a transcontinental railroad that revolutionized American transport, the country again is waking up to the potential of rail to move more people and freight economically and to spur development.

Republicans who never voted for an Amtrak subsidy in their lives suddenly are co-sponsors of the first Amtrak reauthorization in 11 years – a bill that sailed through the House this month on a bipartisan 3-to-1 vote.

One of that bill’s floor leaders was Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, who foresees the dawning of a new Golden Age in rail – if the bill can become law this year.

Rail advocates say the House devised a unique passenger-rail development bill that doesn’t just try to prop up Amtrak but provides federal grants to develop high-speed and intercity rail all over the country, as well as setting up possible privatization of money-losing Amtrak routes.

These days, when both environmental and economic reasons favor cutting gas usage and auto emissions, the equation has changed. Rail advocates say one full passenger train can take as many as 350 cars off the road.

Stu Nicholson, spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission, says it’s 20 times more costly to lay a mile of asphalt road than a mile of rail.

There are some big caveats. One is the lack of ongoing subsidies like the gas taxes that build and maintain highways. In Ohio, a constitutional prohibition prevents gas taxes from being spent on mass transit or rail.

Then, only Amtrak enjoys the special privilege of being able to bump freight trains onto sidings so it can roar through, on rail stock the freight railways often own.

These days, the nation’s 561 freight railways are running their trains all-out, either at or over capacity on their lines, making them even less interested in cutting a voluntary deal to share rails with commuter trains.

“The future,” says LaTourette, “is in separately dedicated high-speed rail. That’s why this bill is so exciting.”

Elizabeth Sullivan is foreign affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages for The Plain-Dealer of Cleveland.