Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough."
Rail is not perfect for everything; however, it is a heck of a lot better than 100+ trucks all driving to the same place that a single train could go much more efficiently.
Ships aren't perfect either, but you don't see anyone driving a truck across the pacific do you?
Replace the majority of trucks with rail and use trucks for last mile (from the rail terminal to delivery point), or truly remote deliveries (from the nearest rail yard! even if that is 500 miles away).
In my town of 700 people there is already a rail line built before trucks were common. It still runs to this day, but almost entirely just to ship sugar beets a few times a year. The majority of 1000 people towns ive been to or lived in in my state have rail either through town or within a 10 minite drive.
If they could put this much rail up 100 years ago, its a cop out to say its too difficult today with equipment able to lift the equivalent of 1000 men.
Is it just a given that subsidizing people to live in Aniak is a good thing?
To be fair, there's a counterargument - namely, that people who live a long ways away from infrastructure have been forced to by the very NIMBYs who made it illegal to build more homes where the infrastructure already exists. Population density near some BART stations is scandalously low.
And no one is going to build rails to such areas like the 500 people living in Aniak, Alaska, or similar.