"Amtrak Joe" Biden is doing what he can to earn his nickname by threatening to veto Republicans' plans to "cut" funding to Amtrak to near-historic highs.

Working its way through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives right now is H.R. 4820, a housing and transportation appropriations bill that would provide Amtrak with $867 million in grants for the coming fiscal year.

That's hardly chump change. Yet the White House has condemned the subsidy as woefully insufficient.

In case anyone hasn't heard the stories he loves to repeat, Joe "Amtrak" Biden reminisced about riding the rails on Monday, during a stop at a Baltimore train tunnel that will undergo a $4-billion replacement.

"Back in Delaware, I’m known for riding Amtrak, for being their senator all those years," Biden said:

As the marathon meeting between rail industry and union representatives neared its 12th hour, the moment Biden administration officials viewed as equal parts inevitable and essential was set into motion.

It was time for President Joe Biden to call in and underscore the stakes. Biden's message was consistent with the one he'd delivered in private calls over the course of the last several weeks, sources said, but an urgency framed around just how devastating a rail shutdown would be for the country was palpable.

Early Thursday morning, after 20 hours of talks, the White House announced that a looming rail strike was averted and a tentative deal struck between the freight rail operators and their unions. The run-up to the agreement had businesses — and the economy — on the brink.

Why it matters: The negotiations, which started in 2019 but reached a fever pitch this week, were the latest issue to pop up in the game of supply chain whack-a-mole we've played for two-plus years.

With the deadline to avert a freight railroad strike by Friday morning approaching fast, a tentative agreement has been reached according to the Labor Department.

The new contracts provide rail workers a 24% wage increase during the five-year period from 2020 through 2024, including an immediate payout on average of $11,000 upon ratification, the Association of American Railroads said. The industry trade group added that all tentative agreements are subject to ratification by the unions’ membership.

Amtrak said it has canceled all long-distance passenger trains scheduled for Thursday ahead of a potential freight rail shutdown as rail workers and freight companies remain at a stalemate in contract negotiations. 

The passenger rail service's heavily used Northeast Corridor will largely be spared of the cancelations, Amtrak said, and its high-speed Acela trips will remain on schedule. Amtrak also canceled several state-supported services for Thursday evening.

MENDON, Mo. (NewsNation) — An investigation was underway Tuesday into the Amtrak passenger train that derailed in rural Missouri, killing at least three people and injuring dozens of others.

The train was traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago Monday afternoon when it struck a dump truck in middle Missouri, causing at least seven rail cars to tumble off the tracks and land on their sides.

The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the House on Friday is expected to spur the largest expansion in Amtrak’s history while kick-starting repair and replacement projects across the nation’s passenger rail network.

The bill includes $66 billion in new funding for rail to address Amtrak’s repair backlog, improve stations, replace old trains and create a path to modernize the Washington-to-Boston corridor, the nation’s busiest. It would be the biggest boost of federal aid to Amtrak since Congress created it half a century ago.