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A solution looking for a problem. This idea has been around for a long time, 20 years plus. So far it has been put a few in to get the politicians placated enough after they have been visited by the promoters with their "hey, we have a wonderful idea" spiels. Simple thought: If a supplier...

There is a lot more to it that just "on the cheap". I could talk a while on this since dealing with track issues in transit and high speed rail had been a goodly chunk of my professional life, but I am not exactly sure where to start. A couple of comments to start: Use of concrete ties began...

Let's just say I am somewhat concerned about the Space X durability. The far beyond design limit of takeoff blast affected area that happened with the first rocket launch makes me concerned about the quality of the rocket itself. This sort of blast pattern beyond protected limits did not occur...

Never occurred to me that a walking stick would be a problem on an airplane. Recently carried one on a plane. No issues. As to use as a weapon: Quite a few years ago saw a fight on a city bus in San Francisco where one of the participants was using his stick to smack the other person. We...

OK, based on you and others, I stand corrected. However, I do stand with saying it is not a good idea and could be disastrous.

If by "hire a car" you mean car and driver, that would be something on the order of Uber. If you mean what is commonly called rent a car, which means drive it yourself, I would strongly advise against doing it unless you have done driving in right hand driving countries before, or you can dip...

I think you are giving Caltrain too much credit in assuming, "I suspect Caltrain will follow the normal best practice in this matter."

This is almost certainly because the line as initially built was single track and the second track added later. It makes no sense to build a completely new bridge for two tracks. It is far less costly and less disruptive to build a parallel structure for the new second track.

I took one long train ride in China. It was in 1997 or 1998, and some of the parts are a little fuzzy in my memory. It was between Beijing and Shenzhen (just across the border from Hong Kong). This was shortly after the through route was opened. Skipping how I got to be doing it, here are...

It is real simple. Cutbacks on quality engineering will bite you later. Get competent specification writers. It is not how thick it is. It is how clear and unambiguousness it is. If you see something named followed by "or equal" throw both specification and the writer out the door.

There was also a Kansas City Southern station that hosted two trains each way between Kansas City and New Orleans up until the late 19960's. Trains ran Kansas City - Texarkana - Shreveport - Alexandria LA - Baton Rouge - New Orleans. Through there sometime in the 1980's, and found the station...

Not sure the tracks even there for some the places on this list, and if they are, they would probably require significant upgrades to achieve acceptable passenger train speeds. If your ultimate objective is Dallas, which would be a reasonable target, then the route from Baton Rouge should be...

You are making this sound much bigger than it really is. Almost everything you have listed is straight out of the box stuff CSX does every day. Except for the overall layout it is simply a matter of grabbing the company's standard plans and stacking them together.

Highly unlikely. The experience of dealing with SP then UP was a significant factor in choosing that the HSR parallel the BNSF where practical, despite the ex SP route being in general straighter and better serving the city centers.

The current planned approach to San Francisco is through Pacheco Pass more or less parallel to state highway 152. It will more or less follow the current railroad south of San Jose to Gilroy and then turn east, meeting the north-south route at a "Y" about half way between Merced and Madera...

They point made also in several of these post WW2 studies was that these land grant and other similar federal benefits were paid back many times over during WW2 alone due to the reduced rates for government freight that was part of these land grant agreements. As to the subsidies since: What...

That the differences were primarily due to private control versus public control was the major point of the studies I read.

There were a couple/few/several done in the 1950's and possibly 60's that I read, but I do not recall the specifics other than that the differences were significant. Some, but not all, of the improvements in freight were due to increased average car load, but the load/unload times were also...

What is being left out here is that nationalization of the railroad system has been done once in the USA. During WW1 the railway system was nationalized under the theory that coordination and standardization would improve efficiency. This was not done during WW2, and the general information is...

"Induced demand" for a one train a day route would be near zero, particularly for a train with the currently erratic timekeeping of the crescent.