American Train Line

[roadman]

where is america so inaccessible by train you would have thought they would be more advanced than they are on that front considering everything is so far away state to state etc not even all the capitals have a station

[barry1010]

Because Americans are in love with their cars and petrol was extremely cheap and is still comparatively cheap compared to the UK.

[DTCwordfan]

and they take planes like buses....

also the rail tracks can be pretty decrepid and visually you can see them moving up and down...wit as on Long Island or in Ann Arbor in Michigan...

[sddsddean]

Also, unlike over here (theoretically), freight trains take precedence over passenger, so if you are doing a long distance journey, you can quite often be shunted into a passing loop for a couple of hours. Most long distance journeys in the US make Avanti West Coast look like they are spot on time all the time!

[Buenchico]

Back in the days when I was a kid (i.e. when I had a pet dinosaur), air travel in (and out of) the UK was highly regulated and massively expensive. Only the 'official' two British airlines were allowed to offer flights, with BEA covering short haul routes and BOAC long haul ones. Domestic flights hardly existed at all, with the few that did only being within the pockets of the super-rich. So rail travel thrived at that time in the UK but not air travel.

Over in the USA though, airlines were far less regulated, with lots of competition meaning that flights could be afforded by a far greater proportion of the population than here in the UK. So the US airline industry thrived, whereas services in the UK were far more restricted (thus forcing people to keep using the trains instead).

The lengths of journeys need to be taken into account too. Within the UK it can often be quicker to take a train than to fly, simply because of the time needed to get to an airport (rather than a central railway station), the check-in times at that airport and then the time needed to get from the destination airport into the city which it serves. In the USA the distances involved in travelling are often far greater, meaning that flying makes much more sense in terms of time.

Going back further into history though, it needs to be remembered that the British rail network was largely developed to serve the needs of freight, rather than passenger traffic. It made economic sense to build a railway from, say, Liverpool to Manchester because there were manufacturers in Manchester who wanted to export out of Liverpool and people in Manchester who wanted to buy goods imported through Liverpool. So a private company was set up to build that railway, with the people backing it being confident that they could make a profit through running it. The far longer distances involved in the USA though meant that building a railway was never a commercial viability. So the UK ended up with an absolutely massive rail network (pre-Beeching), whereas the USA had very few rail services.

[Zacs-Master]

‘considering everything is so far away state to state’

Yep, so far away that planes are the only real option.

[mushroom25]

the biggest problem is that Amtrak (the national passenger authority) don't own their own infrastructure, apart from the North-East Corridor route (Washington-New York-Boston). this is the only route that has anything like a regular high-speed service. everywhere else the infrastructure is owned by the freight railroads. different rules apply to the requirements for signalling systems for passenger trains, as opposed to freight trains (unless passenger train speeds are strictly limited). The freight companies don't see the need to upgrade signalling for passenger trains, and Amtrak can't justify the cost for what is usually only one or 2 trains a day.