What would you think if there were no trains exsisting today?
What would be different about todays world with or without trains or railroads?
Will trains someday be gone?
What do you guys think?
Sure would be quiet around this forum…except for the politicians[soapbox][:-^]
We might not even be to where we are now.
I would go crazy. Out of my mind.
Allan.
i wouldnt have a job
r u crazy?!?!? i’d go nutz! although i’d like to see CSXT go up in flames and have NS or KCS take over what remains from it. lol
I would realy bet that Hell would have to freeze over before that would happen,LOL.
Allan.
The railroad was the first practical overland mass transportation system available. Canals were trying but those pesky hills and mountains just weren’t havin’ any of that. As far as the US goes, settlement and developement would probably have occured on the coasts (Atlantic, Pacific & Gulf). Inland, the Erie Canal/Great Lakes would have been one axis of settlement, meeting the Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri River settlers coming up from New Orleans. This could have spread the influence of the antebellum south much further north (we may have fought the Civil War in Illinois & Minnesota!). Going west, the lessening annual precipitation would have eventually been insufficient to supply canals reaching closer to the uplands of the western Plains. California & the Pacific coast would’ve been seperate from everything else. I think the US would’ve petered out by the time it reached Denver. California would be an independent nation and probably Utah, too. Canada would almost certainly be two nations (no CP to keep British Columbia in). Russia maight have lost its Pacific territories.
In economic developement-if the Industrial Revolution had managed to happen, it would have been very limited, to places that had easy access to tidewater.
I’m usually off the wall enough speculating about RR history, so be warned when I’m taking on the whole world, here!
I take it you’re not asking ‘what if railroads never existed’ – just ‘what if they all went away by now’, right?
As with many things in the history of science and technology, if railroads hadn’t been invented as they were, they subsequently would have been. And most of the ‘logical’ alternatives to coned-steel-wheel-on-steel-rails would probably have been refined out of the operations, very much as they were historically (bi-headed rail in chairs being one that comes to mind as an illustration).
You’d almost certainly see some form of guideway used for mass transit, and for long-distance overland hauling. Whether it would be primarily financed by private money if undertaken ‘from scratch’ today is a different question, perhaps the most interesting hypothetical issue raised as you’ve framed it. But it seems clear to me that in very many places we’d see low-running-resistance guideway-based transportation systems, for freight and for passenger applications as appropriate, and most of these would wind up using a large number of unpowered, independently-braked vehicles pulled by specialized traction equipment. (I won’t go into factors involving electrification vs. use of particular fuels, as the conditions of a particular case would determine what became ‘optimal’ far more strongly than anything related to engineering or design-based rational thinking…)
About the most significant thing that ‘wouldn’t’ have to be the same in this case would be standard gauge at 4’8.5" – purpose-built alternatives would almost certainly be wider, if excess capacity were needed (cf. BART), or narrower if capital cost were to be kept as low as reasonably possible. (But you still see a practical range that doesn’t go below 3’6" – meter gauge is already too narrow for many types of operation – or as high as 6’)
No, they won’t go away, short of the development of pervasive and low-power antigravity lifting. (And perhaps, contra Isaac, not even then! ;-})
I wonder if there is any Mexican citizen/resident who reads this Forum. The Mexican experience is possibly the nearest thing to a USA without Amtrak or a Canada without VIA, and I wonder what the difference was to just one individual who would normally use trains on occasion for long distance trips?
I have zero doubt that freight railroads will always be with us. Ditto commuter railroads and urban electric transit systems. But obviously I must worry about politicians who already seem eager to tamper with Amtrak’s efficiency and subsitute magnetic levitation or some other rediculous approach for high speed rail.
Some of my last business trips in the USA were to area where I had formerly traveled by rail, the Allentown-Bethlahem area, which I used to reach by railroad to Philadelphia and the LVT LibertyBell interurban and by the Lehigh Valley from New York. And Scranton reached by the Lackawanna and then the Eire Lackawanna. Or by the Lehigh Valley to Wilksbarre and the Laural Line interurban to Scranton. I used Greyhound. I got used to it. I would arrive early at the Port Authority Terminal, check equipment for insertion in the luggage compartment, use the “facilities” as completely as possible, and then board the bus to grab the right front window seat. And I confess I managed to enjoy the ride. Only tried renting a car once, and found I was already tired when I arrived on the job sit. So after that, it was Greyhound.
Too heavy euipment to conveniently use air, and not enough time reliability in winter weather. Also expensive, more than rental car.
But once in the Allentown-Bethleham area, for return I talked my client into driving to Lancaster to pick-up SEPTA to Philly where I could use Amtrak, and another time he drove me to Norristown so I could use the old third rail SEPTA 100 highspeed route and sample Russ Jackson’s new cars. He appreciated the extra conversation time.
Well part of the country is already at that point. Back in 1950 we had two railroads. Each of them ran two passenger train each way. We had a local switch that worked all day. I don’t know know how many other trains other trains we had. Now we have have one local railroad. I see four or five trains a years. I think they about 4 a week.
[%-)]If there were no trains, what sound could a tornado make?..
If metra didnt live on, i’d go down with them! 
I love hypothetical questions! What if RR had never been invented:
What a boring place the world would be! The settlement and development of the Great Plains mentioned above would have taken place, just much more slowly, and perhaps Native Americans would have had the chance to establi***hemselves there as an integral part of a different Plains culture. There would have been no great cattle ranches, no drives to Dodge City, no meat packing industry in Chicago, no Chinatown in San Francisco. The Rockies would have remained an almost insurmountable geographical barrier. But once the automobile and hence the truck had been invented, development would have taken off.
Will railroads always be around? In one form or another, yes. Up till this day, no one has been able to invent an adequate and economic replacement. And they’ve had well over 150 years to try!
Will there always be long distance passenger rail service in the US? I doubt it. Even with high speed rail service, the distances are just too great to be practically travelled in the amount of time that people want to spend in transit nowadays. We railfans are hopelessly nostalgic and refuse to face the fact that airlines have long won the battle for long distance passenger service. It is just a matter of time before the federal government cuts all funding for Amtrak, and then…
if there were no dash-9’s where would the feed be!?
Long distance passenger trains remain a necessary part of civilization, in my opinion. There are people who cannot fly long distances or spend more than an hour or two in a car.
How would Wyoming coal get to the eastern seaboard? One pail at a time?
if there were no DASH8’s, how would we ever see fire?
If there were no Dash-8s or Dash-9s, my dog, Dash, would have a different name[:o)]
Mike
If there were no trains I guess I would be a Conastoga wagon fan.[(-D]