The gleaming red-and-white trains sit motionless in a cavernous warehouse in Century City, an industrial neighborhood that cranked out 100 million car and truck frames in its heyday. The seats are draped in plastic; an electronic screen on one reads, "Quiet Car. 11:10 a.m. 000 MPH."

President Barack Obama once hoped that these high-speed trains would be transporting passengers from Milwaukee to Madison, Wisconsin, part of a broader system crisscrossing the Midwest and the nation.

But Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, rejected $823 million in funding that the federal government was offering, and the Transportation Department transferred the funds to California. The two trains now sit idle, with five employees of a Spanish manufacturer left behind to tend to them.