On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 06:43:22 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote:

To put enough railroad tracks in the US to have even half the density of
tracks per square mile as the railroads have in Europe, or half the tracks
per population density in Europe, or half the _any_ way you want to measure
it, would take the gross domestic product -the ENTIRE- gross domestic
product of the WHOLE US for a whole decade, and still not have put a dent in
the project.

We could always concentrate on a regional thought process where
railroads make sense...

Here in the Northeast, rails have made great sense for decades for
commuters. You can take the train from downtown NYC to Philly or DC
faster than you can fly on an airliner. Coast to coast, or intercity
passenger rail in Nevada, the Carolina hills, or Iowa? Not so much
sense there.

But for freight? Enormous amounts of bulky cargo, like cars, fuel
oil, propane, UPS trailers, multi-modal containers full of Chinese
goods, mail, building materials, etc... move daily by rail , all the
way across this big F'n country. When you see towns like Dunkirk, NY
on a UPS tracking manifest, you can be positive your package is on a
train. Lots of stuff destined for the east coast arrives from China
at west coast ports.

Rails make enough economic sense that 100 year old bridges and tunnels
are being rebuilt at great expense, so double stack container trains
can run directly in and out of North Jersey and South Eastern NY.
Each train has the potential to take 100's of trucks off the road
along the overcrowded feeder roads.

Short freight runs can make lots of sense, too. In my enviro-weenie
part of Connecticut, some towns have sewer systems with no processing
plant. Nobody wants to build new sewage plants along the banks of the
CT River or the shores of Long Island Sound. Where does the
collected crap go? Into large tank cars, which are delivered to a
distant processing plant several times a week. Three trains a week
along the Providence and Worcester Railroad replace at least 100 truck
trips along crowded highways, with lower fuel and labor costs. Locals
call this train "The Sewer Chief"! G