I think it makes sense for Americans to think about the train but unfortunately you don't have much of a national system at all. Not trying to be negative but Amtrak has a long way to go on the idea of a national service. Compared to here in Gt Britain or much of Europe. We lost a third of our national system through a silly man called Dr Beeching brought in by a "people's government" to review rail however even in proportion we have a more indepth system. Most big cities have a whole list of trains daily not a handful here and there.
When you look back to the fifties when the plane and motorcar became king, America gave up on the train and what passenger services left betweeen States/cities became a veritable handful and often shunted out of the way to make way for freight where the income was and notoriously late, etc. It was a sad decline and a lot worse than elsewhere. I can admire your encouraging and the fact that inter-State rail has shown an increase but it a shadow of what exists outside the USA and not realised? Elsewhere on the Trainz Forums I commented on the skeleton service you have. Looking at the timetable for the whole of the States in the late fifties two and half inches thick and what is it today? It is a thin booklet. Have travelled on the east coast of the USA by the way but it is sad how poor your national network is and comes far down the list compared to Europe say and the UK. I dare say Amtrak are tring as best they can in the circumstances they are tied into but feel it is not correct to think you have some great system.
I agree with you. We had a great system and squandered it. Now that it's in shambles and a politcal pawn, the people want it back, but it's going to cost so much more to rebuild what has been lost. Not to bring politics into this, but this will also depend on who becomes our leader. McCain will definitely want to cut Amtrak just like the current adminstration. I have better hopes if the Democrats come in.
At any rate, in the name of progress, many lines were abandoned and now it's too late and too costly to rebuild again. Plus now there have been generations of people who never had trains nearby, and do not want them. They find them to be an inconvenience instead of a convenience, and complain loudly when a county or state government wants to institute train service in their area.
These NIMBYs as we call them, have built houses within a meter or less from the tracks, and then complain when the service is restored because they lose their gardens and play areas for their children. They complain about the safety, yet don't want the horns blown at crossings, and they think nothing of running through crossings even with the gates down and a train within a few feet because the trains are an inconvenience in their world.
These are the ones that would rather sit in ther SUVs for hours in traffic instead of taking a train to work. They have no complaints if a 10 lane highway were to open next to their property, but to restore trains service on a railbanked line, forget about it! Trains make too much noise and are dangerous!
Where I live, north of Boston, there was no long distance service until the Downeaster was brought back. That was the first long distance train in about 40 years, and it's not very long distance at that - perhaps 110 miles from Boston to Portland. At one time, we had service from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Boston to Montreal, and to Toronto as well as westward to Troy and Albany, NY. The Troy service ended in the mid 1960's and the service to Halifax ended earlier than that in 1962 or so. I vaguely remember seeing the B&M E units sitting at North Station when I was young, and thinking how different they were from the Budd RDCs I used to ride on from Haverhill to Boston.
It would be nice to see a restored system, but I don't think it will happen in my lifetime.
John
Claude