Possibly thousands. This is south of Seattle. Because roads were given millions of dollars but railroads were given none and not nationalized, the railroad industry declined rapidly.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    literally this morning i was staring agape at pictures of electrified railroads in the U.S. from the 70s. i had no fucking idea we had an electric route from D.C. to NYC. this was after playing some Workers & Resources and marveling at the electric railroad system you can build

      • Des [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        it's pretty addictive but seems to be designed for people that love something in between a city/micronation sim, transport fever and a factorio type resource game. not so much a "beautiful aesthetic designed city" instead being more organic, do what works for the moment, fix later. you basically make your own goals but the mod selection is excellent. tons of community maps of bombed out, post WW2 socialist states for you to clean up, modernize and turn into industrial powers or even post-scarcity. it needs polish (like notification bubbles or something or a message system outside of just clicking on buildings), passage of time flexibility, and better building organization/info. you can play with auto build like cities or sim city (pay $ and resources) but the complexity really shines when you actually mobilize a full construction industry and watch your little mechanisms and trucks go to work but prepare to wait and plan your constructions. Sorry I could go on but i was also looking at it for months and i don't regret paying full price for it.

    • UnironicWarCriminal [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If you grew up in a town of 20k to 200kish that was around pre-WW2 and really want to make your blood boil, do some digging on what kind of streetcar system your hometown used to have. We all pretty much had Germany-level systems, even random shithole backwaters.

    • agoddamncheeto [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Fucking LA out of all places had the Red Car network which today would be a complete streetcar system/interurban for the entire region. One they are trying to recreate only a fraction of with massive costs.

      Or checkout the interurbans that ran in the Chicago area. Being a large city Chicago of course has an extensive streetcar network (that they replaced with shitty buses) but it also had an equally extensive interurban network. So you could go from streetcar to interurban to get to the ring cities like Elgin, Aurora, Joliet, etc. You could also go BETWEEN those cities. Hell you could take it all the way to Milwaukee. All electric, all light rail. The only remaining parts of this I think are the South Shore Line and the CTA Skokie Swift which uses part of the extensive North Shore Line.

      http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/648.html