This article ignores important distinctions between Europe and USA. Two obvious ones are the immense distances in the US that allow unit trains and container trains to be efficient. It makes no sense to load up a huge train to travel to Frankfurt or Zurich.
Also, the dispersed destinations of Europe cause the use of smaller trains that end closer to the final user to make more economic sense. Our system has slowly excluded small feeder lines and industrial users, who have now turned to truck transport. That’s a trade-off Europe has not been willing to make, and we may yet regret.
As the major railroads have consolidated in North America they have less interest in serving the smaller volume accounts.
These are the big railroads left: BNSF, UP, CN, CPRS, CSXT, NS, KCS. This has left the service of individual locations in many metro areas to small specialized feeder railroads that only service metro areas. Like the IHB. They just move cars around Chicago. The big railroads all bring cars to them in the Chicago area. They actually deliver to many of the customers.
Many of our lumber yard customers lost their rail sidings in the last 20 years. Many sidings were abandoned once they needed repairs because there was just not enough revenue or ROI for the railroad.
There are many “railtrails” across the northeast and Midwest that were once active railroads. Now they are bike paths and running trails in and around many cities.