AHC: Have America maintain trains as a popular, nationwide mode of transport till the 21st century.

DougM

Donor
Railroads were already dumping all the local passenger trains that the government would slow them to dump by the late 1940s and early 1950s. That is before the Airplane took over and for much shorter routes, the only thing that kept short and medium haul passenger trains around was the Railway Post Office cars and mail shipments, And those were on limited routes and even then that didn’t pay for all the passenger trains.
In 1948 the C&O had purchased all the equipment needed to institute a ne passenger train and it dumped the whole idea and sold off as much of the equipment for it that it could unload at huge losses Why because the passenger train was dead it just didn’t know it.
Yes you can keep some trains going and better and more then we have now but to keep then as a primary form of transport? Not going to happen. Even with the high taxes shorter distances and much more dense population that Europe it takes everything they can do to keep the train network they have.
If you look at the actual numbers passenger trains from the late 1930s they were already in the decline and frankly only the longer distance trains were doing well. As pre war the passenger plane was not realy a common thing yet. This was offsets bit by the Great Depression But once the economy improves the short distance train is dead. Once we get better medium distance the medium distance train is dead and once we get good passenger planes the long distance trains are gone.
This was inevitable. And it was going to happen with out without WW2 and or the interstate system. Expressways were already starting up and the Airplane was coming.
So you want to keep trains as a major form of transport you need to
Radically slow down Airplanes
Limit cars.
Increase cost of gas,
Increase the density of the population
And a number of other highly improbable things that will so radically change the US as to make it a different country,
So basically this is not happening in the US as we know it and will take so many changes starting so long ago that it is all but ASB.
I truly wish it was otherwise but it isn’t
 
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