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.

  • UnironicWarCriminal [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    As late as the 1940s, you could take a train from small Midwest towns pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. My grandparents grew up in small towns/on farms and never had a car as kids. Some of that was the economic, of course, but "lack of being able to get places" was never really something that anybody considered a struggle, because it wasn't! The Iron Horse had you covered, and towns were built so that you could walk, or take the streetcar once they got "big" (as in about 20,000 people)

    There is now zero regular passenger train service unless you're within ~70 miles of Chicago (the "Amtrak" routes almost always get bus substitutes)

    • pumpchilienthusiast [comrade/them, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      this is a fun article :

      Consider, for example, the Burlington Zephyr, described by the Saturday Evening Post as “a prodigious, silvery, three-jointed worm, with one stalk eye, a hoofish nose, no visible means of locomotion, seeming either to be speeding on its belly or to be propelled by its own roar,” which barreled from Chicago to Denver in 1934 in a little more than 13 hours. (It would take more than 18 today.) An article later that year, by which time the Zephyr had put on the “harness of a regular railroad schedule,” quoted a conductor complaining the train was “loafing” along at only 85 mph. But it was not uncommon for the Zephyr or other trains to hit speeds of more than 100 mph in the 1930s. Today’s “high-speed” Acela service on Amtrak has an average speed of 87 mph and a rarely hit peak speed of 150 mph. (The engine itself could top 200 mph.)

      • agoddamncheeto [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        When I was a kid we would go to a train museum and they had a Zephyr there. They also had about 10 miles or so of track to run trains on and one weekend a year they would run the Zephyr on it with passengers. So one year we were lucky enough to get tickets in time. Holy shit that was the most beautiful train I’ve ever been on. From the dinning area to the coach and sleeper cars everything was top 1930s amenities. Damn thing even had A/C. And FAST. Think it got up to around 90 and it was as smooth of a ride as trains I’ve been on in the EU. But only America would throw away something like that to make even more money off of the automobile.