Originally Posted by KC10 FATboy

High speed rail in the US is very unlikely for the simple matter of physics and economics. The rails in our country our privately owned by the freight companies. Freight is heavy, very freakin heavy. Unfortunately, this means the speeds at which they travel is lower and the rails were built with sharper turns. Additionally, the burm or angle of the turn is too low for high speed rail and you can't raise it because the bottom rail topples over from the massive weight.

The Acela trains tackeled this problem by having the cars physically tilt on the wheel trucks. This allows the trains in some areas to reach (I'm guessing here) about 160 MPH. That is not high speed but they can only move that fast over limited areas.

If they started to build high speed rails here in the US, they would have to start from scratch because you can't mix highspeed and freight. They'd have to buy all of the property easements. Cha-ching. Those pesky environmental laws and requirements. Cha-ching. The noise they would bring into communities and associated lawsuits. Cha-ching. Ain't going to happen (in my redneck tone).

Freight trains in Europe are smaller and lighter and they can use the rails built for passenger trains. Here that is simply not the case.