The rail system in the US sucks!!

I've been thinking about where I might want to go this summer. I don't get a summer vacation of course, and I don't want to take too much time off since I just used 40 hours annual leave while my parents were here. I've been thinking I could take a long weekend at some point though. It would be feasible if I stayed in the south, and since I've never been to SC, don't remember NC, and have never been to lots of GA I'd still get to visit someplace new. I started looking into how long it would take to drive different places. Then I had a thought - I could take the train instead of driving. Except, as I said, the rail system in this country is terrible. If I wanted to go to Savannah, GA for example, it would take me a little over 5 hours to drive there. Not terrible, but not really close either. If I wanted to take the train to Savannah however it would take me over 24 hours. The reason is this: I would have to take the train from Atlanta to Washington DC then get on another line and go from DC to Savannah. Yes, you read that right. I would have to go through DC to get from Atlanta to Savannah. WTF?? I never had this problem in France. I took the train from Angers to Cannes (without going north to get south!), and it was a nice train ride. I'd love to see a better US rail system, but I'm not very hopeful. Sigh.