The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'A silver train in a valley sunset.'
I think trains are great. My grandpa was a railroad safety inspector. I grew up playing with elaborate model train setups. Most of the time, I'd rather ride a train than fly. Unfortunately, passenger rail in the US is a joke. Our cargo trains are targeted by organized thieves. There are about 3 train derailments every day. And the government's recent blocking of a railroad strike looks very bad.
Once upon a time, trolley systems were everywhere and taking trains was the norm. Then there was a massive conspiracy to eliminate trains in favor of automobiles. General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone Tires were behind the conspiracy. Here's a quote from the website of the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association:
"In 1949, National City Lines were convicted in Federal court (and in 1951 the conviction was upheld) for destroying the electrified rail and electric bus transit systems in 44 American cities. Beginning in 1937, National City Lines embarked on a nationwide campaign to induce cities (by aggressively pushing “an offer you can’t refuse” of G.M. /National City Lines financing – at the height of a 12 year long, world-wide economic depression) to scrap electrically powered streetcars and trolley-buses, which G.M. did not make, and to substitute gasoline powered buses manufactured by G.M., burning Standard Oil gasoline, and rolling on Firestone rubber tires. When National City Lines would aquire a transit system, the trolley rails would be ripped up, the overhead wires would be cut down, and the system would be converted to buses within 90 days."
A CBS news article tries to rewrite history by saying that the streetcar lines closed down for economic reasons and anyway more people wanted to use personal automobiles than streetcars. The economic reasons in question were economic conditions created in part by the conspirators. And industry was obviously behind the push to sell personal vehicles to people.
Today, the only part of the US with a reasonable rail system is the Northeast. There are light rail systems in dozens of cities, but many of these are of limited utility. Minneapolis has a light rail train and it's fine for going to St Paul, but the closest stop is miles from my house. Crime on the train has risen sharply in recent years, raising safety concerns.
The state of the railroads in the US is embarrassing. And a conspiracy by big business put us on this path. Passenger rail should be connecting the whole country into a convenient and navigable network. Having ridden trains across the country, I've found the experience to be the opposite of convenient. It's too expensive, too time-consuming due to limited route options, and they don't even have smoking cars anymore.
The cost of expanding our lame rail system is prohibitive. But the cost of everything is prohibitive. And the government has seemingly endless supplies of money to throw at the military industrial complex. Surely they could expand our rail system too.
I would even support the creation of a nationwide rail system run by the government. Like the post office, but for mass transit. It should be the easiest thing in the world for me to hop on a train to Chicago or Des Moines or even Denver. Just look at a map of European high speed rail to see what we're missing out on.
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