*looks at coming administration* *looks at Front Range Rail plans* *sighs deeply* - ThreadSky

courtneymilan.com • 108 days ago

*looks at coming administration*

*looks at Front Range Rail plans*

*sighs deeply*

Comments

Rode the Georgetown Loop a few weeks ago. The conductor said people in the 1800s would take the train from Georgetown into Denver just for lunch in the city and then back afterwards.

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

What do we want?

TRAINS

When do we want them?

CONTINUOUSLY FROM 1870 ONWARD WITH APPROPRIATE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS TO ACCOUNT FOR THE TRAIN BUBBLE BURSTING WITHOUT ABANDONING THE CONCEPT

funmandave.bsky.social•108 days ago

Where are we going?

PLANET TEN!

When are we going?

REAL SOON!

alex.fightins.online•108 days ago

it's time https://bsky.app/profile/bageltechno.bsky.social/post/3laohnarhv22y

montanakennedy.bsky.social•107 days ago

Just wishing regs would be set on train length or that cargo and passenger service would have equity in right of way.

Make passenger rail a thing again!

seanmackey.bsky.social•107 days ago

The consequences of the decisions of Robert Moses continue to linger.

chimaera.bsky.social•108 days ago

WITH PRIORITY GIVEN TO PASSENGER RAIL NOT FREIGHT PLEASE

jenreadsromance.bsky.social•108 days ago

you might really enjoy reading the book Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon. It was just one of those books that delighted me at every level, lots of train stuff. but also, like! that's what a grain elevator is! whoa!

morselya.bsky.social•98 days ago

📌

This does indeed sound like a brilliant book, thanks for taking the time to recommend it!!

fidelioscabinet.bsky.social•96 days ago

📌

drcrob.bsky.social•108 days ago

📌

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

Ooooh I love train stuff!

jenreadsromance.bsky.social•108 days ago

this is BY FAR the most engaging work of history I've ever read. It's just wildly interesting is one of those "oh that's why things work they way they did" ways.

jenreadsromance.bsky.social•108 days ago

it kind of started slow, had a bit of that "this was someone's PhD vibe" about it, but then it just really won me over. It's FASCINATING.

whetstone.bsky.social•98 days ago

i got this book from the library on the strength of this enthusiastic recommendation and you did not oversell it at all. just got to the end of the grain elevator + futures chapter.

i am *riveted*

lmansley.bsky.social•108 days ago

In the same vein, I also like the part about time zones.

jenreadsromance.bsky.social•108 days ago

this entire book was just fantastic. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed up that thing about how they deforested Wisconsin and then just floated all the logs down the lake to Chicago.

akgerber.bsky.social•108 days ago

giving it a reread right now for the first time since college and I second the recommendation, it's very good

jenreadsromance.bsky.social•108 days ago

i loved Illinoise. what a show.

whetstone.bsky.social•108 days ago

📌 book

panderingslats.bsky.social•108 days ago

Imagine if we had a TGV equivalent traversing flyover states

vafrommd.bsky.social•108 days ago

I love trains. Rue the dismantling of passenger rail services in my area. We used to have passenger trains up and down the Delmarva peninsula.

p.s. That entire debacle in Ohio made me sick to realize how few workers are operating miles of trains hauling toxic chemicals. Recipe for disaster.

kstainback.bsky.social•108 days ago

And train bathrooms that aren’t the size of coffins and covered in shit. And why the hell are there STAIRS on our trains? Who thought it was a good idea to make people go up and down on a moving train? If you think air turbulence is bad, wait until you hit some of those bad tracks out west.

chrisholly.bsky.social•108 days ago

Not sure that's the best call and response. It may need some trimming. 😁

crypto-pomelo.bsky.social•108 days ago

I was heartbroken when I excitedly opened the railway map of USA for a proper scenic trip and saw there are only like 30 lines total in the entire country.

Here in EU, every town has 30+lines. Wtf happened since the wild west era and tracks everywhere? Why did they let it disappear?

tur3ine.bsky.social•108 days ago

I think it was about money. Carmakers wanted roads for people to buy cars to fill roads so we need more roads to have more cars. The other reason I read was that we needed roads to more quickly move military equipment during ww2.

shipperxphile.bsky.social•108 days ago

There was an early 20th century utopian concept of separation between work and living. Big proponent was Corbusier and some other Modernists(capital M). When they began fleeing Nazis in the late 20s/30s and landing in the US they found fertile ground for realizing those concepts into reality 1/2

shipperxphile.bsky.social•108 days ago

To…er…very mixed results.

(my thesis project to graduate architecture school was a lot about that subject. 🥴)

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

Also, the US went through a massive railroad bubble. Everyone with money went hard on railroads and built them to everywhere including places with no people and little water.

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

There were a lot of reasons for the westward push but part of it was magnates trying to make people use their railroads. For a while, money was plentiful and there were tons of jobs in railroads.

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

Then the bubble burst and railways started going bankrupt right and left. Lines closed/got permanently turned over to freight.

czedwards.bsky.social•108 days ago

Looked up that railroad bubble date — 1873 and realized that all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books after Big Woods are the effects of growing up in a 2 decade long economic depression without any safety net.

Even with Rose’s Libertarian Editing Glasses. It’s 20 years of a depression.

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

I think some of Rose’s libertarian reading glasses are because the government giving out land like candy to whites people in fact destroyed a lot of people.

azteclady.bsky.social•108 days ago

--both cargo and passenger trains, limited car number
--panoramic transcontinental routes as well as fast transit

(might as well dream big)

marc-my-words.bsky.social•108 days ago

--Separate ROWs for passenger and freight trains
--National funding to help create more no horn zones

markcathcart.com•107 days ago

We can't even get that for a 24 mile stretch between Denver and Boulder. For all the other great things that are happening. Passenger rail isn't one of them. They are planning to build 8-miles of siding so the BNSF freight can park up so the 3 trains per day in each direction can pass. Mad.

evilceldrud.bsky.social•108 days ago

Hey the horns are the best thing about the US!

caren.bsky.social•108 days ago

Not in Chicago! We have so.many.crossings.

sarahabein.bsky.social•108 days ago

Not when you live near the tracks! Or even not THAT near, really. But I'd take it as a trade-off for increased train infrastructure.

sarahabein.bsky.social•108 days ago

Y'all, ok, I see you're all built different apparently. I have lived and tuned out train horns too, I promise, but that does not stop them from occasionally being like "WOW did you have to lay on that this time?"

courtneymilan.com•108 days ago

It is still possible to get places designated as quiet zones so you don’t have to sound horns in neighborhoods, BUT from personal experience as someone who lives close enough to a crossing, you do stop hearing them.

bwinter.bsky.social•108 days ago

Overpasses or tunnels means no need for horns *and* you can maintain a constant (passenger train) speed of 200 km/h or more!
(This is possibly 125 mph in American money. I mostly do European trains.)

evilceldrud.bsky.social•108 days ago

The soundscape of those horns with the bells reached my soul. I am surprised their beauty is not recognised

marc-my-words.bsky.social•108 days ago

I hate the horns, but I'd take the trade-off too. In East Lansing, MI a freight/Amtrak line runs directly through the MSU campus 24/7, next to dorms housing thousands of students. Sleep researchers find that noise is harmful even when asleep: https://www.salon.com/2008/06/25/noise_pollution/

johnanstey.bsky.social•108 days ago

Can't beat the chime whistle on one of the big steam engines!

evilceldrud.bsky.social•108 days ago

Been reading up about noise pollution, there appears to be nothing agreed! https://www.nae.edu/19579/19582/21020/255782/255847/Trains-Planes-and-Automobiles-Transportation-Noise-in-the-United-States

crankyotter.bsky.social•108 days ago

My cousin’s grandma lived about 25 feet from a RR crossing where the trains blew horns several times a night. Cousin took new husband to stay over at her house and didn’t warn him about the train horn situation.

azteclady.bsky.social•108 days ago

oh dear!

thehappyheretic.bsky.social•108 days ago

I can understand the need to blow the horn every now and again as a warning that a train is coming. Every half second is a bit excessive.

markcathcart.com•107 days ago

Towns and counties can convert most crossings to non-horn zones... It takes a while and a lot of design and inspection... Ours half a mile away went silent just before COVID.

dakaradana.bsky.social•107 days ago

-- fully electrified national network
-- new HSR ROW in corridors that support it
-- a base tunnel through the Appalachians between Philly and Pittsburgh

kate7.bsky.social•108 days ago

I read this too fast as paranormal transcontinental routes, and I'm not sure it would be a detractor from the tourism angle.

azteclady.bsky.social•108 days ago

Considering the number of dead/abandoned railroad stop towns, never mind the ghost mining towns, it could be marketed like cruises: just go around visiting all these interesting places, living off your own little cabin.

nicole-glover.com•108 days ago

Passenger rail is a solution for so many things! Also it’s funny that a past invention is probably the best solution for the future.

Also another good train book is “lost subways of North America” which about cities and how many abandoned rail

azteclady.bsky.social•108 days ago

It's already a solution in East Asia and in Europe.

avaghy.bsky.social•108 days ago

I alway think about how good high speed rail would allow people to live further from city centers possibly encouraging more housing development. To go 60 miles by train from Orange County NY to NYC takes me over 2 hours door to door.

theroamingkiwi.bsky.social•107 days ago

YES! I once took an Amtrak from Eugene to Seattle for a concert and spent half the trip wondering why I’d ruined the trip in the past by driving.

You’re telling me I can relax and enjoy the scenery and stretch my legs… WHILE ALSO SAVING TIME?!

stevepuma.bsky.social•108 days ago

FOLLOW! 🤣

billie.bookstoreromanceday.org•108 days ago

Thank you for reminding me to book next year's train travel now. Gods only know what ticket prices will look like if I wait.

karenho.bsky.social•108 days ago

Every time I think about the rail systems in Japan, Taiwan, France, and Hong Kong, I cringe a little inside remembering the one time I took the Acela in business class, the sad-looking seat and how the power outlet in my row did not work.

katexas.bsky.social•108 days ago

Last time we took Acela from Baltimore to Philly, it was 1/3 pushing our suitcases through the aisle looking for a place to put them, 1/3 going a dozen+ cars back to find 2 seats (not adjacent), then 1/3 going back to our suitcases and standing next to them until we reached the station.

karenho.bsky.social•108 days ago

It boggles my brain how much wealth and power takes this route between Washington and New York, but the Acela trains offer the equivalent of basic economy services compared to so many other international systems because of the focus on making money instead of greater efficiency and the environment.

avaghy.bsky.social•108 days ago

I was talking w/an urban planning firm a couple of yrs ago about upgrading Amtrak’s northeast corridor and it is wildly expensive b/c we haven’t made any real improvements since the Eisenhower administration. Not sure we will ever be able to have what other countries take for granted.

markdowling.bsky.social•108 days ago

To be fair, there are serious works under way or close to - Baltimore Tunnel, DC Long Bridge expansion, Connecticut River Bridge replacement etc. The question is what will continue and what will be halted for four years

rmacdca.bsky.social•108 days ago

German trains 🏆

hanseberhard.bsky.social•108 days ago

That train sailed decades ago. 👎
It's Swiss ones though. 💪

acesurd.bsky.social•108 days ago

DOWN WITH HYPERINDIVIDUALIZED MODES OF TRANSPORTATION

rikibeth.bsky.social•108 days ago

I want the trains my mother had! When she traveled from suburban New Jersey to Kansas City to be a junior bridesmaid in an uncle’s wedding.

flipwriter.bsky.social•108 days ago

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.

tryptic.bsky.social•108 days ago

It's frankly amazing that the fetish for the old west (as problematic as that can be) hasn't extended to a support of rail transport. It makes so much sense out here.

cbsunflowers.bsky.social•108 days ago

We’re losing TRAIN GUY Joe Biden and that part really sucks

todd-j-smith.bsky.social•108 days ago

It could still happen, you just have to tailor the proposal for this administration...

The PowerPoint needs lots of shirtless men laying steel rails by hand, then pounding their chests and screaming.

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