Well Veeky Forums my train has been delayed for an hour

>an actual incentive to upgrade track and run faster trains

I will agree that Amtrak is pretty shit, but from what I've experienced, private networks are hardly better. The best-run and most advanced rail networks in the world are all either state-run or public-private partnerships. Britain, which is heavily privatized, has one of the shittiest rail networks in Western Europe.

>Also GM conspired to buy up municipal streetcar companies and dismantle them to increase automobile sales.
That's only half true. The reality is that in a lot of cities the streetcars were rickety, loud, and barely worked. Sanfran had to invest a shitton of money to renovate theirs, in fact they're still renovating them to some degree. Compare that to the new bus system being introduced that were relatively quiet and clean.

And Japan, which has a railway system so precise that being early to a stop could create dangers of later collision, is a special case. It was a group of 6 companies that took over from the government railway group, but because they are the nation's main transportation system the rails themselves cannot be considered private.

Despite what he said, Mussolini did not in fact make the trains run on time.

>Britain, which is heavily privatized, has one of the shittiest rail networks in Western Europe.

How so?

Funny thing about japan: the rail system itself is great, but the byzantine system of fares is just terrible.

It wouldn't be Japan if the simple things weren't needlessly complicated.

>expensive
>relatively slow
>less-advanced
>confusing fare system

That said, it is still superior to anything in the US or Canada, which says a lot about the state of North American rail.

Stop rubbing it in asshole
O-our trains are scenic, they're supposed to be slow and unusable.

user we don't even use our trains for travel, they're primarily for heavy cargo transport.

Despite how big of a deal they made it in Back to the Future 3, a steam train in 1885 could pretty easily make it to 88 mph with no cars being pulled and a straight track. Hell, the Broadway Limited of the Pennsylvania Railroad did 127.1 miles an hour between AY tower and Elida, Ohio on Monday, June 12, 1905.

You can use them for transport, it's quite beautiful through the rockies. It also costs about as much as a plane ticket and takes 10 times as long. Very touristy. Loved going on there, wouldn't trust it to take me to the next city over, and I say that as someone who has hopped freight.

The local dialect of my county vanished within decades of the first railway being built. It happened all over the south-eastern UK. Places that had previously been rural and culturally unique became little more than dormitories for London and the major cities.

Amtrak was actually designed by Richard Nixon to provide shitty service and be abolished after a couple of years. He wanted to allow the railroads to simply stop running passenger trains (as the government mandated they do), but that would have been too unpopular. Instead, railroads were allowed to transfer their assigned routes and passenger rolling stock to Amtrak. They generally swapped their oldest, shittiest locomotives onto the passenger lines immediately before this, as well.

Nixon had a similar attitude towards NASA. He wanted to shut the whole thing down because Apollo was too expensive, but didn't want to be the president who killed the space program. Instead, he shut down Apollo and its follow-ons and approved the Space Shuttle as a low-cost means of transferring the problem to the next administration.

Urban streetcar lines had also been restricted to 5-cent fares since the 1930s or earlier, leaving them unable to make a profit after inflation. A lot of them sold out to bus companies just to get around the fare restrictions.

Streetcars are dumb tho
Toronto still has em, and all they do is clog up traffic and take public money away from proper light rail.

>people actually thought going 40mph into a tunnel would cause such massive air pressure change that you'd die

What a time to be alive.

explain why I would not, heathen.

Better than buses, though.
Also a lot of American cities went from streetcars to no mass transportation, rather than some alternative light rail option.

The Rail vs Motor industry battle is a great example of how free market capitalism just doesn't work for consumers.

Kill yourself, you stupid communist.

>4-4-0
Nice

On April

ITT: We post choo choos we'd name after /ourgirl/. It can be from any railroad from any era, but it has to be a nice one.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5030925/German-firm-sparks-anger-naming-new-train-Anne-Frank.html

Technology, especially of this magnitude, usually has oppressive long term consequences.

what are the best books, documentaries, or etc about railways, trains, and their history?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephenson
>tfw I'm blood related to this man

>George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways",[1] Stephenson was considered by the Victorians a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. Self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praised his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8 12 inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the standard gauge by name and by convention for most of the world's railways.

>Pioneered by Stephenson, rail transport was one of the most important technological inventions of the 19th century and a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Built by George and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 is the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. George also built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830.

Fuck off

best game on this coming through

*blocks your path*

I love that kind of social history. A similar thing happened to folk music after the radio was invented. What had been a hodge-podge of local traditions very quickly became homogenized

What's the best looking station?

Were train robberies really a thing in the Old West?

No you

It later was sold to Chinese warlords I believe.

Yes. Trains is how Jesse built his reputation.

Robert Riddles was a pretty cool guy.

It doesn't have the most god-tier videogame OST ever so its automatically trash
youtube.com/watch?v=bxCKiHvcfJc

Blood, Iron, and Gold.

N&W J Class

This

Also checked

youtu.be/kDYPH7wh2Qs
Why can't America into any kind of infrastructure

I have sometimes been on a train. Do you guys want a redpill? Ok, I think that the trains in my city always stop in tunnels because they're afraid that some edgelord will jump down the opening and try to commit suicide when the train emerges from the tunnel at full speed.

Because we have cars.

We found a way to finally cut down on that in Japan. The train company bills the family for the cost of cleanup and expenses caused by the suicide delay. That guilt trips a lot of people to kill themselves a different way.

>implying they don't have the world's best railfreight network

*blocks your path*

>*steals your land*
>*buys your politicians*
>*raises your freight rates*
>*slaughters your farmers*
>*drives down your wages with Chinese labor*

heh... nothing personnel Californians...

most people don't drive some #stancenation ricemobile.

wow cool

That's dumb, what a pointless waste of time

If someone actually wants to kill themselves they'll find a way

The suicide isn't the reason, the cleanup afterwards is.