Thanks for the replies
Indeed I live in Melbourne Australia and no, we don't have Amtrak in Australia.
There are many train journeys around the world that people aspire to take, in particular the high speed kind. Obviously there is a cost to this but if one can find a frequent flyer program that converts points into train travel then this can be an opportunity to fund train travel another way.
In particular I think it would be great to find a program that can convert points/miles into bullet train travel in Japan or into a Japan rail pass. That would be an excellent use of points/miles.