Yes, much of the nation's railroads were destroyed by excessive and bad regulation. Shippers and passengers had to suffer with bad service as a result. Then the govt had to spend a great deal of money to save critical services.
The problem, which is a lesson for us, is that the regulation policies were far behind the times. The regulation policy was built around the assumption that the railroads were powerful monopolies that needed tight control.
I believe we discussed this a while back. WU recognized way back in the 1950s that the traditional telegram was obsolete. It tried hard to position itself for data communications but things didn't work out for them. WU should've been a big part of the Internet revolution 40 years ago but it wasn't, despite having defense contracts for data comm.
In the 1960s WU tried offering private line voice services, but I don't think that took off.