> Let us remind all that at one time the US was well on it's way to developing high speed
> rail in the 1930's with 100 mph consists pulled by steam locomotives, and all accomplished
> via the private sector. Then came along the FRA with it's 79 mph max sans ABS,


Indeed we were well on the way to high speed rail in the late 40s / early 50s. But the ICC did not put any cap on train speeds. The railroads then being penny wise and pound foolish (same as now), did that to themselves. I do not believe it was the need to impose ATS/ATC regulation that killed 100mph+ trains. It was the marginal economics of the passenger train; along with what I consider to be an enormous strategic regulatory blunder by Congress.

Then as now, the necessity for railroads to extend the reach of safety devices designed to prevent inevitable human error from causing accidents, was very real. With the advent of Failsafe ABS, CTC and interlocking systems, accidents due to human error by wayside personnel, had been all but been eliminated wherever these systems were employed. However, the onboard crew still had no such protection from their inevitable human errors, such as running red signals.

And just as with the installation costs of the ABS and interlocking, the economic reality was (and still is), that few railroads had the ability to fund such improvements unless all their competitors also did the same.

This is simply because when money is diverted from the bottom line to pay these costs, the company will suffer in the stock market, compared to those railroads that did not spend the money on safety. And stock market weakness is often a corporate death sentence. It could even cause a hostile takeover by another railroad that didn't divert money to safety, which would still put an end to safety improvements. Either way, safety improvements die because of harsh economic realities - whether we want them or not, whether railroad managements want them or not.

Now we will either have improved safety or we won't! But in the long run, then (ABS, ATS, ATC) as now (PTS), we can finance it only by uniform federal regulation requiring it of all competitors together. This is the same argument made by the founding fathers when they made regulation of commerce a federal responsibility in the first place. Socially responsible actions were not even then economically possible without such regulation.

The strategic blunder came not because of the needed imposition of regulation intended to improve safety, but in the hamm-fisted way in which it was done. The hard reality that the consequence of a train wreck at high speed was not in any real practical way reduced at speeds below 79mph, was lost in the political fray, leading to an unjustifiable compromise of real safety at any speed below 79mph.

Why 79mph? There is no sense to it. Since most trains (especially freight) did not go that fast, they wouldn't even be covered. Only the fastest passenger trains would. This despite the fact that a collision of any two trains at 40mph is still a catastrophe.

So, being that the economics of high speed passenger trains was already marginal, most railroads chose to downgrade train speeds and remove what ATC and ATS was already installed. Talk about a hamm-fisted and counterproductive regulation! It accomplished exactly the opposite of what was intended. Worse to come, it killed any chance that higher speeds might have been competitive enough to save the private passenger train.

What should have happened? Since the safety requirement to prevent onboard human error from causing accident was present at any speed above yard speed (still is), the ATS/ATC requirement should have been set much lower - perhaps any speed at which you could not stop within 1/2 visibility. Or if that seems too strict, certainly no higher the 30-35mph.

Had that been the regulation, most all route miles would now be long covered by already proven technology, train crews would be protected from their own inevitable human error, the railroads would not have been so motivated to reduce train speeds thus destroying any chance of success with their new passenger trains, hundreds if not thousands of major accidents would have been prevented, thousands of lives would have been saved over the years, and the present multi-billion dollar PTS political farce would be irrelevant.


Indeed, If the railroads had focused on increased velocity rather than increased axle loadings and train length, capacity would be gained by clearing the tracks sooner, unwieldy trains that take hours to get moving again would seem silly, freight would easily beat truck times, railroads would be thriving (as measured by market share) and possibly even private passenger trains would have survived.

All this by regulation making very high speeds safe even for freight trains.

All but for a strategic blunder in applying needed regulation.