With the length of the trains and the use of roller bearings the caboose became useless. I don’t believe that they should reduce the crew to one person but it doesn’t matter where the conductor is riding. In spite of one bad accident rail is still the cheapest, most environmentally friendly and safe way to ship goods across country.

 

It’s not very environmentally friendly when they keep spilling toxins into cities and creeks.
Cody I agree with you for once. Huge fines and penalties need to be laid on these nitwits.

 

Anyone here think we could ever have high speed rail in North America ? I would never risk my life on one in this part of the world, but there always seems to be some idiot making a mistake somewhere that results in preventable accidents.

 

we could. We should. It’d make our lives a lot easier and better.

 

I love the idea, but we can't seem to control slow trains safely , I couldn't imagine the carnage resulting with high speed trains. In these accidents someone always manages to be distracted at the helm, or forgets to change tracks, or disobeys speed limits. Other parts of the world get it right, I have no faith here.

 

They are working on one in Florida www.gobrightline.com

 

publicly fund it. Set and follow safety regs. It is all extremely doable.

 

We have one they might be building, from one small town to another small town in the Central Valley. Talk about a train to nowhere, no one will ride.

 

Dean, I live off of rt 495. 60 years ago when they built it everyone questioned why they built this stupid road.
It was hardly used. Today, it has very frequent traffic jams.
If you build it they will come.

 

This Forbes article outlines some of the reasons high speed rail isn't really a viable option in the US.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammil...h=6689dced108c
I don't necessarily agree with all the arguments made by the author but he does raise a number of challenges faced by high speed rail here, IMHO.
The greatest challenge is economics. High speed rail is extremely costly to build out. What makes sense in the Northeast Corridor won't work in most of the country. Without heavy subsidies Amtrak would not exist. Then there is the cost of ongoing track and equipment maintenance. Amtrak's Acela trains have a top speed of 150 MPH but only over about 50 miles of its 457 mile route.

I say all this as someone who really enjoys train travel. We are looking forward to resumption of Amtrak service as the Sunset Limited resumes service that had to be discontinued east of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Amtrak is currently running testing and training equipment between New Orleans and Mobile so we should soon be able to hop a train in Gulfport and ride to New Orleans, overnight there, then ride home.