it is the furthest inland you can reach from the sea by ship

That's not actually true. There are several further in than Chicago. Duluth is the furthest inland sea port in the US

You can reach farther inland than Chicago - Duluth MN. But Duluth is otherwise not a useful destination (unless you need iron ore).

Yes. Please, go on...

Real late reply to this but Cleveland nearly became a hub for a lot of shit in the US, but then everyone decided Chicago and New York were cooler.

Like the largest rail depot in the world was in Cleveland until they built a larger on in NYC. Cleveland ended up replacing that depot by building the second tallest building in the world at the time that remained the tallest building in north America outside New York until 1964.

To be fair, I took that train back in the early 2000's. If they've improved the service then great.

It was a great trip, and I recommend it, but as a European I was just gobsmacked by the lack of daily options!

Driver here! I love my car, she is incredible and comfy and has an amazing sound system.

…if I have the option, 100% bus or train, I don’t want to drive. I’d much rather put on noise cancelling headphones and zone out and read or something then pilot a deathmobile (who, I will repeat, I love her very much because she’s best)

Don't hate on Amtrak, they have been beaten to pulp by lack of interest and investment but still are making meaningful improvements every year.

One of the biggest issue is that rail was privatised way back when and the cargo rail got the ownership of the tracks. This just means that products, patient as they are get priority.

The North East corridor is getting tunnels rebuilt, added frequency. North Carolina has funded a major rail extension and so on. It's very slow but it might be necessary for it be that way to not attract attention from the GOP. Slow incremental gains until it reaches escape velocity.

It shouldn't be that way but Amtrak is doing well considering how little help they've gotten.

the UA

… Ukraine? Normally you’re not supposed to use “the” when referring to it these days.

And while I’m sure rail is an important element of the development of modern Ukraine, I don’t think its the most significant example.

It's much harder to plan around property ownership when you can't just kill the property owners.

American culture is generally anti-collective so that "independence" coupled with cars becoming status symbols ensured the death of rail in America.

That's the joke

Railways were being built in the US as early as 1795, and their first purpose-built “main line”, the Baltimore & Ohio, opened in 1830, 5 years after its British counterpart the Stockton & Darlington.

Yeah but now Mexicans are cooking pickled herring tacos.

Yeah, you're right. The train at the end of my street isn't pictured.

If you build it, they will come.

AFAIK passenger trains have priority. But they have a lot of single rail infrastructre and freight games the system with trains that are too long for passing sidings, so the passenger trains have to wait.

And big tech profits from the EU flow to the US you win sum dim sum

Based on my experience playing Railway Empire, passenger cars with people and their luggage is significantly lighter than a freight car of the same size loaded with cargo. This means it takes a lot more energy to get the freight moving at a higher speed, and maybe more importantly a lot more to stop (I think it takes 3-4 football fields for a loaded freight train to stop from 30mph). So just having passengers allows the train to travel at much higher speeds. Speed is something more valuable for passengers because they want to get where they are going sooner. Freight is more about total throughput volume so it may be better to have one heavier train carrying twice much at a slower speed than two trains have the size each moving faster. So while you could have a mixed train it's not going to be as fast as the passengers want due to the heavy freight cars slowing the train down and won't carry as large a volume as the freight customers want because some cars are being taken up by passengers.

Freight and passenger trains optimize for very different things, and those things are largely incompatible.

Passenger trains want speed, quick turnaround on the vehicles, frequent stops etc.

Freight wants efficient transport (= lower speed), few stops, turnaround time is less important.

Also trirail, but yes.

Yea, that is true. I mean having more robust regional routes covering smaller sections would be cool but don't expect an extensive web of trains going around the Rockies or Wyoming.

I'd love to see something reasonable to cover the empire builder line- I just want to get home to Seattle from Chicago for the holidays in under $100 round trip :/ otherwise it's Alaska Airlines for me.

That 3.9M figure includes European Russia and the Nordic countries, which are largely excluded from the map image to make the difference more glaring. Not as much rail connectivity in the north. But even with that, Europe is twice as densely populated as the USA. If you look only at the EU, it is 3x as densely populated.

It's not the only reason for the difference, but it's a big one.

Isn't europe over 700M people though? We so often get caught up in the EU population.

For the unaware:

In the small town where I grew up, the train station got turned into a supermarket + gas station + mcdonalds (yes, really 🤮 ). To take a train to anywhere else in France, you first have to drive 25 minutes (not the longest, but really defeats the point of taking local / regional trains).

Faudrait le mettre en prison 🤨😁

A whole week.