Longer passenger train service probably doesn't make economic sense, though, since airline travel is almost always faster and cheaper and automobile transportation is often cheaper and usually more convenient, but that doesn't invalidate the concept of passenger rail service altogether.

One of the flatbed cars had a fuselage of what might have been a Boeing 727. (I guess it fit through the tunnels...it didn't look like a beer can that someone stepped on.. )

I could have pictured it on a truck with a million wheels going through weight stations on the Interstate Freeways.

My experience is that some routes are more reliable than others. You might have got lucky on your visit, or have travelled on the trains which run at peak business hours and which the railway companies try their hardest to make sure run on time. But that still leaves the cost. Example - a return ticket from York to London (182 miles) which permits you to go on a train that arrives in time for a morning meeting costs £130 ($200 approx). If you take into account petrol, depreciation on the car, insurance, maintenance costs per mile and a day's parking in central London, I'd guess that the same trip by car costs around £70. If four people are travelling that's £520 for the train compared to £70 by road. If you allow for the 80% taxes on road fuel alone, then the real actual cost of that road journey is nearer £20, and if you allow for the subsidies which the government pumps into the rail industry, then the cost of the train is probably into four figures.

Granted, railways might be a more viable option for freight. Though in order to avoid skewing the sums, then either shippers would have to pay what it actually costs to transport goods that way rather than a vastly subsidised figure, or I would need to hear some convincing arguments why the economic and environmental benefits of doing it that way justifies the subsidy. I am convinced that for passenger travel, they do not.

BTW, the assertion by railway enthusiasts that the huge subsidies in European countries are used to make the up-front cost of travelling easier is, IMHO, a myth. Their trains are faster and more reliable than ours, but no cheaper. For just over two years I made regular trips from Paris to Bordeaux (about 3-4 times a year). An advance-booked off peak ticket was 1,275 francs (£105 approx). That's about the same distance and price as London to Edinburgh. The low-cost airlines will now get you there straight from London for a tiny fraction of that.

The Width of Railroad Tracks is based on a History that Extends Back to Roman Chariots-Fiction!

Summary of the eRumor
This story is a "We've always done it that way" tale. It says that the standard distance between railroad rails in the U.S. is four-feet, eight-and-a-half inches. Why? Because that's what it was in England. Why? Because that's the gauge the tramways used before the railroads. Why? Because the tramways were built using the same tools as wagon-builders and that's how wide the wagon wheels were spaced. Why? Because the old roads in England had ruts that the wheels needed to accommodate. Why? Because the ruts were made by Imperial Roman chariots.

The Truth
There is no evidence that we could find that this is true. In an article on www.railway.org by D. Gabe Gabriel says this tale has existed since shortly after World War II but that history does not support the claims of the story. The Roman ruts, according to Gabriel, were not for chariots but for narrow, hand-pulled carts. Although there are many places where the ruts are visible, Gabriel questions that they played a role in English railroad standards 1400 years after the last Roman legions. One of the claims of the eRumor is that the width of the ruts was affected by the need to make the chariot and it's wheels the same width as the combined rears of the horses pulling them. Gabriel says there's a statue by Franzoni in the Vatican museum that is regarded as the most accurate known depiction of a Roman chariot. The two horses are wider than the chariot and the chariot wheels behind them.

Where did the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch standard originate? Gabriel says it was from a Englishman named George Stephenson. Carts on rails had been used in mines in England for years, but the width of the rails varied from mine to mine since they didn't share tracks. Stephenson was the one who started experimenting with putting a steam engine on the carts so there would be propulsion to pull them along. He had worked with several mines with differing gauges and simply chose to make the rails for his project 4-foot, eight inches wide. He later decided that adding another six inches made things easier. He was later consulted for constructing some rails along a roadway and by the time broader plans for railroads in Great Britain were proposed, there were already 1200 miles of his rails so the "Stephenson gauge" became the standard.

Interestingly, the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch width has not always been the standard in the U.S. According to the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 20 different gauges ranging from 3 to 6 feet, although the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch was the most widely used. During the war, any supplies transported by rail had to be transferred by hand whenever a car on one gauge encountered track of another gauge and more than 4,000 miles of new track was laid during the war to standardize the process. Later, Congress decreed that the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch standard would be used for transcontinental railway.

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Paul, you wrote:

<<The train looked like it was at least a mile long, maybe even longer. It had 4 locomotives running point, and 3 at the end pushing.>>

While the front locomotives are hooked together via MU hook-ups...pushers generally operate off of a radio control system linked to the lead unit.

On locomotives, the vast majority of the operating is done with the brakes.... Throttle is engaged with air brakes on...and the brakes are gently let off...

"Whipping the Throttle" is a MAJOR offense and WILL result in derailments and broken couplers....

The most impressive sight I have ever seen was in the mid 60's. I was traveling though Eastern Oregon, and I stopped for a cup of coffee in some small hick town. While I was sitting there, the coffee in the cup started to get ripples in it, and then the ground started to shake. I asked the waitress, "Are we having an earthquake?" She said, "No, just a freight train passing through."

I thought, "I have to see this" - and went outside. In the distance there was indeed a freight train. It had TWENTY TWO locomotives pulling, and SIX more locomotives in the middle.

Every one of those locomotives were blowing heavy smoke out the stacks (including the locomotives in the middle) while it was pulling and shoving that train up the steep mountain grade.

Just a freight train? Wow! I wish I could have gotten a picture of that....

Gerard, the axle shafts are straight through. No differentials. But you will notice the wheels are beveled. As it goes around a curve, one wheel rides higher on the bevel and the opposite wheel on the other side rides on a lower part of the bevel. That's how they go around a curve without slippage. Some of the old logging locomotives had "Blind drivers"...that is, some of the wheels did not have flanges on them. That enabled the locomotive to negotiate sharper curves without derailing.

There is one speed locomotive engineers avoid as much as possible....that is about 18 MPH. They want to get through that speed as quickly as possible. At about 18 MPH, a phenomenon of "harmonic rocking" can develope. That oscillation can get strong enough to derail the train. I am sure Will can give a better idea on how bad that oscillation can be.

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It is important to note that many of the Amtrak accidents that have happened over the years have not been Amtrak's fault at all. Amtrak actually owns very little right of way (rail lines). Most of their trackage is operated under lease from frieght railroads and is share by frieght and passenger trains. The collisions that have happened over the years have been the fault of the frieght railroad traffic controlers for the most part, and the derailments have been caused by track that was maintained to handle slower moving frieght trains and not higher speed passenger trains. Amtrak has gotten a pretty unfair rap over the years

I geuss I really can't comment too much on long distance rail, not having much experience with it myself. I did take a train from Liepzig to Berlin once. The ride took quite a while, but only because we bought the cheapest ticket available (and thus the train would stop at every station instead of continuing on straight through). It was very comfortable however and rather enjoyable. I've also ridden on the Berlin and Munich subway systems. The S-Bahn in Berlin circa 1997 was quite an experience. You could definately tell when you were on tracks that had been controlled by the East Germans and when you were on tracks that had been controled by the West Germans by the way the train would shimy from side to side on the East German tracks. The Munich subway was very modern and convenient however.

Point taken about the cost of maintaining a road network; but in this country, the amount of taxpayers' money spent on road maintenance and building new ones is roughly 15% of the revenue taken in motoring-related taxes (principally fuel duty and road tax). Once you balance out the overall figures, the taxpayer provides a proportion of 'match funding' to the price of a rail ticket, whilst for every mile you drive, you are paying the government far more than you get back in investment in the road network. In fact investment in roads as a proportion of GDP is actually being reduced, whereas we should be spending money on the research needed to deliver environmentally sustainable private transport. The answer, in the short term, is to travel as little as possible, but in this day and age very few people have that option.

I have heard the trouble was it had too many wheels, or it was a design flaw in one set of bogies.