US Rail: sanity options 1945 - 2000

[Giant Man Eating Rabbits]

A spin off from my earlier thread 'British Rail: sanity options' but concerning the US rail roads.

What sanity options would you propose regarding the funding, operation of the US Rail Roads in between the years of 1948 to 2000?

Your replies can include

Rolling stock
Locomotives either steam, diesel or electric
Routes?
Management?
Funding?
Or anything else regarding US Rail Roads?

I'll start.

AmTrak:

Surely to god they could find the financing somewhere to build a mere 100 miles of new high speed track per year so that AmTrak could operate full French/Japan style high speed services after 1971 especially as only 600 plus miles of their route network is actually owned by them and not shared with freight companies. Would a levy on fuel do the trick like they did with the building and operation of the Interstate Highway System?

((( light bulb moment))) as I was typing the last sentence.

How about the Gov't enacting legislation regarding the building the Interstate System deliberately with a large medium between both carrigeways so to be able to put 6 lines of HSR (3 down, 3 up) down the middle cutting costs as with Brightline's LA to Las Vegas route?

Would that work?

 

[Kevin C. Smith]

Public money to fund private rail service? For HSR? In the USA ? Between 1945 and 2000? I'm afraid that this is DOA. OTL Amtrak is as good as it was going to get (though there are a few missed opportunities there, too). Firstly, until, say, 1960-ish, the two groups that would have opposed it most would have been the railroads, and the federal government. The feds weren't going to give money to the RR industry (still seen as basically well off with a history of corruption and enrichment behind them), and the RR's didn't want the strings attached (seriously, look at the editorials in the trade magazines from 1920's-1960's...you'd think Ayn Rand wrote them). You got some cracks in that wall with commuter services ("we are going broke running this, if you want it you pay for it"). By the time long distance trains become such a millstone, the OTL timeline is pretty much set in stone as it is.

So, leaving aside the public funding idea, let's have a look at some of the other areas:

• Locomotives: Diesel went as fast as could be expected OTL. Perhaps a little too fast, as a case could be made that some steam assets were written off too quickly is a few cases (not really enough to make any difference for the industry, though). Electrics were too capital intensive for anyone to touch after WWII...except for General Electric's proposed rebuilding of the Milwaukee Road's electrification in the west. While it died practically aborning, it came justthisclose to being a natural OTL wank, imo. While not an industry game changer, the butterflies would be interesting.
• Both rolling stock and management really aren't going to be that different, which leaves
• Routes: This, I think is your best bet to make any substantive changes. There were a handful of successful mergers in the era, and some aborted ones that could have done good, and...Penn Central. As the period progressed the idea of merging parallel lines and abandoning the redundant parts became the panacea for the industry's problems. But nobody wants to lose their rail service, or their jobs, and competitors don't want a strengthened neighbor. But...perhaps...end-to-end mergers may make it through. There are going to be a couple of problems with this, too (many were proposed, few were consummated). Again, competitors aren't going to like falling relatively behind a neighboring line that is getting strengthened by growing. So, the industry would need to resurrect a passage from the 1920 Transportation Act, and arrive at a proposal (or at least an understanding) of a plan to consolidate the railroads of the country into fewer, larger, systems. Unions are still going to object to any job losses, but communities won't be threatened (as much?) by service losses. If just about every railroad line is going to become part of something larger, then the intra-industry objections may be quelled.