[AT] Rail Cars

[Dennis Johnson]

I agree with many of the ideas about speed of delivery and some other factors that has limited rail transport.  I visit "home in Kansas" and it hurts me to see places where old rail lines have been tore down. Traveling, I see similar things in many other places.
  Trains are flourishing for containers, coal, rock, and some chemicals or hydrocargons. For many other things the system has broken.
   
  Living in Russia for a while, I got the priviledge to take passenger trains several places. These were my preferred method of transport if I was only going in the same time zone, or maybe 1 time zone away.  For distances further than that it took too much time for business travel to warrant train travel. For a vacation, I took a train from Russia to a few neighboring countries, which was in interesting experience. When crossing 1 border, the entire train changed axles to use a diffrerent axle spacing, all done in 2 hours or less. Euope still has working trains that is also a jot to travel on.
   
  Back in college, I took a transportation class and the basics were that boats are the least expensive, trains next, then trucks, then aircraft.  The basics have not changed. One thing that has also changed is that there is now a general public sentiment that many things are good as long as they are next to someone elses "back yard" and not my "back yard". Where I work in Texas is right next to some train tracks that have been there for decades. Now there is some public protests about the trains.  The railroads have been forced to put in some semi-intelegent directional train horns, because the public did not like being bothered by conventional train horns. This attitude may prohibit most new train tracks from being built, and contribute to shutting down the smaller lines. My understanding is that there are several east - west tracks, but the north - south tracks are lacking in many areas. Without publlic support that welcomes train tracks, train crossings, and trains, I
 do not see a significant improvement.
   
  Regards,
  Dennis