I wish you luck!

@@Ostermond thank you!

get me in contact obviously, I'll set a deal up haha

Keep us posted on what he says somehow. Maybe the discord?

Yes, please ask Andy Muller.

There's stuff outside of the Wasatch Valley?

St. George, UT has never had direct railroad service by my knowledge. Most of their population growth has only been in recent decades (though they’ve grown massively in that time). The rail line the _Desert Wind_ bypassed it about sixty miles to the north-northwest, and I doubt the prospect of driving seventy minutes to middle-of-nowhere Modena would be appealing to anyone in St. George. In fact, that whole I-15 corridor would require a whole new right of way to be built.

@@DiamondKingStudios Cedar City at least has a branchline that used to be used for seasonal extras to the National Parks.

Honestly I think the best way to start would be to start creating larger and more frequent through running regional rail systems that extend out from cities to the country side also with circumferential connections. Start making these systems for smaller cities and also in smaller states start state wide, poly centric, systems. All the New England states could easily be covered in passenger service as it was in the past. I live in upstate NY in a town of about 5k people, most of the stuff I need is out of town and I have to drive as there is 0 public transportation. In the past everyplace I go to was not far from a train station with regular service that I could’ve gotten to with 1 transfer or no transfer at all. The regions population was less back then and the specific village I live in only had about 400 people (it’s like 800 today) but the station saw 40 people getting on a day. That’s better than some Amtrak stations!

@@leek6927 One idea for regional rail I’ve started thinking of is this: where two or more smaller branches converge into a trunk line, run one or two MU units on each of the branches, and for inbound trains they converge into one train into the urban core, and for outbound trains they split off. Each unit will have different lettering to distinguish each branch, and auditory announcements will alert passengers when the train approaches the point of divergence. Barring any issues with punctuality or coupling reliability, this could be a useful way of reducing transfers and allowing one-seat tickets from the core to anywhere in the peripheral suburbs or towns, with railcars ordered in the consist based on when the branch diverges. When it comes to crosstown trains, passengers may need to move to a different car based on the specific destination, but the process should be made easy and convenient for the passenger, with timely auditory announcements and destinations on the car’s exterior alongside the origin, as well as diagrams of the train’s interior if applicable (which with modern electronic technology should be). For branches with significant passenger traffic (such as to airports) that might require their own full-length trains, separate trains could be run for them.

I don‘t know about France as a representative of rural rail service. France has pretty bad service for Western and Central European standards. Germany, more specifically northeastern Germany would‘ve been a better choice I think. It‘s quite sparsely populated overall, quite car-dependent as a result and yet it still has regional trains every hour on many lines, operated by small, inexpensive railcars.

Check out Switzerland, they have great rural passenger rail.

after going to France I think uk has arguably better service in certain rural areas.

Same for me. We need to talk about this

I live in Pottsville would love to take a train out of the renovated train station. They did spend millions of dollars tho fix it up. Reading & Northern just does holiday special out of there but it would be cool to actually take a train to then hope on Amtrak. Every time I want to go visit my friends in Philly I need to drive and when I go to visit my friend in NYC I drive to Elizabeth town to then take the train to Philly then up to New York it’s rather a pain because it adds an hour plus onto my trip. I refuse to drive in NYC it’s too much to park and to drive. Also it is rather easy with the subway to get around. I being extremely wishful with the train service out of Pottsville but let a man dream.

As soon as the _North Coast Hiawatha_ gets reinstated, there should be coordination with Yellowstone National Park to provide connecting bus service from Bozeman or Livingston, MT to the park, or maybe a rail spur for the more ambitious planners. I doubt Yellowstone would have even been our first national park if not for the Northern Pacific seeing the area as an opportunity for tourism in the 1870s in the first place.

They generally keep the Rambles at 30-35 mph max, so that passengers feel as if they got their money's worth. Several stretches of the railroad are Class III (60P 40F)

@@liammcgrath3114 Amtrak runs under those conditions in Vermont on the "Vermonter". A possible reason R&N might not want to do regular passenger service is that it would subject them to having to install PTC on those routes.

Older relatives corrected my pronunciation before I even learned that was an actual railroad. My father was born in Pennsylvania and grew up much of his childhood near Lancaster, so I guess that’s part of it.

One Problem with that: Norfolk Southern Corp.

The 2102 is so loud that she often drowns out her own Reading 6-chime whistle, one of the loudest steam whistles on the rails.

And that one Amtrak policy the in-famous Richard Anderson put up in 2018.

Only DMUs you can get Stadler Flirts

Tame Impala - Lost in the Yesterday

Subsidies means that it isn't self-supporting DIRECTLY. The benefits go out to the larger economy as a whole. If I told you I had an investment with a 300% rate of return and a consistent 50-year track record, you would throw every penny you had at it, right? Well, according to a non-partisan report, that's NASA. Every dollar put into NASA puts three dollars into the national economy. (certain NASA advocates had claimed a 1700% rate of return, and opponents said it was a money-hole, so that's why the report was made) The same holds true for public transportation. We don't expect roads to turn a profit, so why expect the same for passenger trains? The benefits come in the form of increased mobility, decreased wear and tear on the roads, more job opportunities, higher real estate values, etc. A positive return from the farebox is nice, of course, but airlines wouldn't make money without massive amounts of direct and indirect subsidies either.