Trains

[A18]

There's something uniquely cool about them. I just have no idea what it is.

[Smid]

Love 'em. Catch them to-and-from work every day. Public transport policy is one of my favourite policy areas.

[Sensei]

Trains are pretty interesting, come to think of it, especially those newfangled MagLev things that go super-fast.

[Rin-chan]

They're neat and make it easy to get into the city while avoiding traffic!!

Rin-chan

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Positive, duh!

[Daniel Z]

Positive. I will never take a Greyhound again.

[MODU]

Trains are the best (hence my huge model layout).  I had a shirt that listed the "top 10 reasons why I became an engineer (student)."  Number one was "I always wanted to drive a train."  hahaha

[paul718]

The best, most reliable way to commute.  I took a train to and from high school .  Now I go to graduate school in Manhattan and, of course, my borough is the only one whose train system doesn't hook up to the rest of the city.  I would have to take the train to the ferry, ferry to Manhattan, then get on a train there.  It completely eliminates the convenience of commuting by train, so I take an express bus ($5 each way, ouch).

[memphis]

Awesome (normal) Unfortunately, the US is way behind other nations here.  Our trains are hella outdated.

[RosettaStoned]

The Coast Starlight is a nice ride; if you get a sleeper car. (LA to Seattle)

[Boris]

I enjoy spending my time jerking it to those large model train sets, so positive.

[frihetsivrare]

My opinion is very positive.  I have never ridden a commuter or long-distance (Amtrak in the U.S. or DB in Germany) train in North America, only in Germany and Switzerland.

Yeah, trains here are very much behind Europe, Australia and Japan.  This is even more obvious on the West Coast.  The closest commuter train system to me is in the San Francisco area.  Seattle has plans to build light rail trains to and from Everett, Bellevue, Tacoma and around Lake Washington; the Monorail doesn't count.

[Smid]

I enjoy spending my time jerking it to those large model train sets, so positive.

I would love a model train set! I used to love my lego train set when I was little. Trains rock, but Connex (Melbourne train operator) sucks. The other day, my train was running 35 minutes late. They're useless!

[opebo]

I like them a lot, but my favorite are not the modern, fast, or sleek ones, like in Europe, Japan, or Korea, but rather old delapidated ones like you find in developing countries like Thailand or the United States. 

The old stations are nice too:

[afleitch]

Trains are cool. Trams and undergrounds are cooler

God I sound weird.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Here is a perfect example of the state of our nation's rail system.



Pretty sad.  But it is getting better.

It's only a matter of a year or so before we have commuter rail in Minnesota and high speed rail between Minneapolis and Chicago with possibilities between Duluth, the Twin Cities, and Rochester as well.

We are the nation of the car.  We have the most extensive interstate highway system in the world.  Even that is crumbling.  We have typically neglected one system in favor of the newest without ever considering the benefits of improving the old to complement the new.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Best form of land transportation by far.

[MODU]

God I sound weird.

Yeah, but we still love you. 

Here is a perfect example of the state of our nation's rail system.

You forgot to add this ...



The only problem, or I should say one of the big problems, with high-speed rail in the US is that the terrain where it is best suited is the areas where there is little demand.  You need plenty of fairly level and straight land in order to build a practical high-speed rail system.  Bridges and tunnels are expensive, so you may have to cut the rail line through private land or even through developed town centers, which is also expensive.  In the corridors where such a service would be wanted (East Coast and Coast to Coast), there are so many obstacles to achieving the right conditions that it becomes an epic task.

[afleitch]

My cities little subway

[Four49]

The Coast Starlight is a nice ride; if you get a sleeper car. (LA to Seattle)

I took that once, great ride.  It was the first leg on my journey back to Chicago.  I went Seattle to L.A. to New Orleans to NY to Chicago.  All AmTrak.  It took me eleven days, but that was the point.

[Franzl]

My cities little subway

I absolutely loved the Glasgow Subway! Couldn't stand up in the trains though!

[afleitch]

My cities little subway

I absolutely loved the Glasgow Subway! Couldn't stand up in the trains though!

In rush hour people do stahd, but the stand with their head down or 'curve' their body along the side of the train

Brownie points for a - visiting Glasgow and b - taking a 'burl round the subway'

[Bono]

The US share of freight transported by train is way higher than Europe. I guess that compensates for the smaller passenger share.

Anyway, here are some photos of the Lisbon metro:

[Хahar 🤔]

I wish we had some here.

[Hash]

Trains and metro=win.

The Rennes metro is cool. It's short (but adding a second line, and potentially a third line soon) and run automatically (so the lazy asses like those at the RATP can't go on strike) and the signs are bilingual French-Gallo. Rennes is the smallest city with a metro, IIRC.





The SNCF is pretty good, except when the lazy asses go on strike every month. The TGV is great and TER trains are also good, except that they take forever.

VIARail is apparently cool too, but it's Canadian trains, and those are slow as hell. Montreal metro is also pretty cool, though old now.