Trains Expected to Resume Normal Operations Today : Transportation: Short-run Amtrak service is reinstated after Congress, Bush ended national shutdown.

The nation’s railroads began rumbling back into service again Friday after Congress and President Bush acted overnight to end the two-day-old rail shutdown. Most rail operations were expected to return to normal by this afternoon.

A spokesman for the Assn. of American Railroads said crews were clearing away a “backlog” of several thousand idled freight cars. Most passenger service was being restored Friday as well.

One factor slowing the return to full service was a U.S. Department of Transportation safety rule requiring that all tracks be inspected visually before passenger trains may use them again, but authorities said that would cause only marginal delays.

Business officials said that because the shutdown was ended so quickly there would probably be relatively little impact on the economy. Industries such as auto-manufacturing and mining, which already had begun some layoffs, were expected to recover quickly.

Economic analysts said the prompt action by Congress--which approved the legislation overwhelmingly before sending it to Bush for signature--came just in time. The White House had warned that had the shutdown continued, it would have cost $1 billion a day in lost jobs and output.

There was no immediate indication just when the railroads and the unions would begin bargaining again in an attempt to negotiate a solution to their four-year-long wage-dispute, which also revolved around job security and work rules. But officials hinted that talks with at least some of the companies and unions could resume as early as next week in an effort to reach some sort of settlement before the end of the 38-day period specified by the new legislation.

Under the package signed by President Bush early Friday morning, if the two sides have not reached a settlement by then, they will be subject to binding arbitration, in which a mediator would choose the most “reasonable” of the latest offers on the table.

Labor leaders said they would comply with the procedure, but made no effort to disguise their bitterness at being forced to abandon the strike.

They charged that a limited job action had been exacerbated and turned into a national shutdown by a lockout imposed by the railroads. They said they would work to defeat President Bush in the November election.

Linda Ross, a spokeswoman for the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose walkout precipitated the nationwide shutdown, said the union would “abide by” the legislation “and fight like heck to change the political situation.”

Amtrak said passenger service in California was expected to return fully to normal today. The California Zephyr, from Denver and Salt Lake City, was shut down Friday but was scheduled to resume regular operations today.

Short-distance Amtrak trains--such as those running from San Diego to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, from Oakland to Bakersfield and from San Jose to Sacramento, already had resumed full service Friday. But the commuters had not fully returned. In Los Angeles, only about 20 commuters arrived at 9:01 a.m. Friday on the usually crowded San Diegan.

“It’s great,” said Sean Barrett, a banker who was back on the train Friday after driving Thursday. “It took me about 2 1/2 hours to come up from Irvine.” He said the train took only about an hour. “I love it.”

“It’s a lot better than the bus,” said Jim McCreary, an ARCO employee who was back on the train after riding the bus to work from Fullerton on Thursday. “You’re sitting in traffic (on the bus). On the train, you don’t sit in the traffic. It’s a lot more comfortable.”

The rail shutdown began at midnight Tuesday when the machinists’ union struck CSX Corp., the nation’s third-largest freight-hauler. Although other unions had agreed to continue talking, most other railroads shut down, saying they could not continue without CSX’s interconnections.

After action by Congress and the President, the machinists’ union ordered its pickets off at 3 a.m., and the railroad resumed regular operations a few minutes later.

Times staff writer Richard Simon in Los Angeles also contributed to this story.