If you want to send me a Freepmail message with a general location where you live, I can do some research on this for you. I work as a civil engineer and transportation infrastructure planning/design is my specialty, so I usually know where to track down information about trends and developments in the railroad and trucking industries.
Let us know what is happening in rail. I’d be interested as well.
That’s good information. You should post more about it.
The area behind our neighborhood where I once lived is being made into “rails to trails.” Its a disused line which hasn’t seen rail traffic since the 1980s.
AT LEAST someone in government had the sense to preserve them as public “rights of way” - so nothing is built on them which would preclude them coming back as future rail, pipelines, telecom corridors.
The decline of rail in the last 60 years is fascinating. My great Uncle, born in 1880, as a young teen, used to be able to take this same rail line (buffalo-pittsburgh line) in the morning, travel 35 miles, to drop off milk from his family farm at a dairy in downtown Buffalo, and be back in time to go to school. He said it cost a nickel.
So in 1890, we had fast, efficient, cheap and profitable private commuter rail service - which has been basically eliminated from most cities.
“...so I usually know where to track down information...”. I see what you did there.