return of the railroads

I came across the article and thought it might be of interest to everyone. It is about a Harvard professor who is predicting a new Golden Age for American railroads. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/200 ... ilgoe.html

Very good article - although I think its a LITTLE over the top, but not THAT much.

I have often wondered why a modern day "REA" hasn't popped up. Amtrak's express service was a good effort, and I think would have been successful if some of the logistics were worked out of it. But I wonder how long until we get something along those lines once again, in particular with commuter railroads into the big cities.

You want to ship a package/message/letter from your town to the nearest big city. there is a commuter train stop in both those locations on teh same line. you go down to the station, hand the letter/package to the station agent, he would bring it to the train, and for a premium, that item is at the big city in an hour.

A few times, ive ordered things from various places in NYC to be shipped to my house in New Jersey. Ive checked the tracking from UPS and sometimes, it takes such odd routes that it would have been easier and quicker for me to go and pick it up myself!!! But i would surely pay a premium for the item to be delievered to NY Penn Station, checked in, and put on a New Jersey Transit train, which would arrive at my hometown station in a hour and 10 minutes. Id go there and pick it up and have the item in a matter of a few hours instead of a few days.

It just seems that the railroads were WAY ahead of their time in the 1800s and 1900s, and maybe now, we are starting to look at the past a little bit and see how things worked then, and how they might be able to work for us today and tomorrow.

I too , think the amtak express idea was ahead of its time . There is a huge future for railroads in America (and elsewhere ) to move back into high value ,high speed freight and passenger market . Wether it will be the existing class ones i don't think so , but more smaller customer foscused railroad companies .

Good article, I though it was a little much in some parts. There is a lot of validity in what he says. As our nation looks for ways to get freight off the highway's the railroad is going to be the most economical outlet. Express mail and parcels on the rails again could work. Getting the railroads themselves on board with such a project would be a big hurdle though. Maybe down the road we will see mail sacks flying out of trains again...

I don't see mail sacks flying out of trains ! . it will all be palletised or conatinerised . not necessarrily full size containers , but something that can be lifted off the train from a platform in a few minutes . Fast trains of fixed consist , no switching or marshalling , the conatiners are simply lifted off and transferred to another train or road hauler .

I was just about to post this very article, glad to see it already posted and under discussion. I am reading Stilgoe's book Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States right now and is excellent and timely. Whats most interesting is that the book is 6 months old and already much has changed in that brief time to further move us toward a new era of the train and seemingly away from our old era of the highway and sprawl, particularly with respect to the financial crisis, foreclosure mess, high gas prices, politics of "change" and global warming awareness. At least to me it really feels like a very large change of society is in the works. Even California HSR could finally be a real possibility with its placement on the ballot this year and just think of the drastic changes and reshaping that would do to California if passed. Amtrak and transit ridership has seen huge ridership increases in the last few years. I'd have been skeptical of the thesis of Train Time when it was published just 6 months ago but now I really think it is quite possible. This is not merely Stilgoe's personal wish that the train will return to prominence but is based on observations that he has witnessed directly and indirectly of investors and transport managers who are investing great sums of their own money in railroads and railroad based development and are researching railroads for future investment. My neighborhood of the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon has seen billions of dollars in dense investment all of it within a couple blocks of the new Portland streetcar line, there is also a huge new neighborhood being built from scratch on the south side of downtown Portland that is entirely built around the streetcar called the South Waterfront.

I just read an article today about the town of Windsor, CA that built a new train station and community around the station and are waiting for a future train service to begin. Stilgoe's book mentions a ski town in Maine that also built a new station for anticipated passenger rail service too.

Stilgoe wrote an excellent yet overlooked book on railroads and the built environment shaped by them called Metropolitan Corridor:Railroads and the American Scene that I highly recommend to fellow forumers. It is required reading for a class I am currently taking and other fellow students in my class enjoyed the book too. My professor who is an expert on the American built environment thought it was one of the best books on railroads and yet it is a book you will rarely see in railroad book collections or book stores.

My neighborhood of the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon has seen billions of dollars in dense investment all of it within a couple blocks of the new Portland streetcar line, there is also a huge new neighborhood being built from scratch on the south side of downtown Portland that is entirely built around the streetcar called the South Waterfront.

not just portland, basically every major city has some sort of rail transit in the works, and all of them have high density development near the stations. Here is a good website for all things light rail/commuter rail/streetcar related: http://www.lightrailnow.org

Putting express cars on commuter trains might be an answer to slack traffic on mid-day trains.

Could design an express car that handles rollon-rolloff containers. Make them big enough to hold that refrigerator! Could even automate the loading/unloading at stations and do it quicker than the passengers take.

The mid-day trains would:
(1) Better fleet and crew utilization
(2) Allow more trains to run mid-day
(3) Provide extra revenue

Outsource local pickup/delivery

...Ken