You can spend a lot of time in Kansas City without even being aware that passenger train service still exists, for the moment anyway. Two trains a day to and from Saint Louis, another to Chicago, and a train from Chicago that passes through on the way to Los Angeles. That's about it. And that service is always the first target for budget cuts when the economy goes bad, as it's doing now. President Obama once made a speech in which he promoted high-speed European style rail service as a way for people to get around without all the security charade at the airports. As if they wouldn't start frisking and fondling train passengers too, just to give more Democrat moron voters jobs. Amtrak trains are notorious for heat and air conditioner failures. Rode one a couple times back in the 1970's. Trains are cool, but around here, just not very practical.

Patrick, that is pretty sad, because actually the very concept of high-speed train was originally invented in US. Unfortunately, after WWII, US chose private cars and airplanes, while Japan and Europe chose rail. Japan was the first to implement the high-speed rail - Shinkansen, and various European countries then followed. Inter-City is the pan-European concept of "almost high-speed" rail; the trains are locomotive-pulled trains employing ordinary rail network, but speed being 140 to 220 km/h (90 to 135 mph). The true high-speed rail is 220 km/h or more, and trains are not locomotive-pulled, but multiple electric units. I like trains more on distances less than 500 km than planes: the stations are located at the centers of the cities, there are no hassles at stations, no need for taxi from airport, no check-in hassles and the waiting time at station is usually ten minutes or less. And as the trains nowadays have WLANs and electric connectors for laptops, I can work with the computer at train as well and not just sit idle. [And there aren't club cars in the airplanes.] Finland opened her first high-speed rail line to Russia this year; the line, "Allegro", runs from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.

Good idea to modernize these old ballads to current technology

Susanna - An American rail system is a very useful idea, but the President must understand that such a project cannot be accomplished by simple executive decree. Nice parody here. ;D

Yup :-) I actually wrote that spoof on my way from Tampere to Helsinki. I was sitting in the Inter-City double-decker car, and I had just plugged my computer on. Of course, the air-conditioning, doors and seat worked just fine, but the porter in my spoof had to have something to do. But going on 200 km/h on a double-decker car is a bit innervating thing. The VR Sr2 electric locomotive, is a reliable thing, though, and the double-deckers have actually been designed for faster speeds than the ordinary single-decker cars.

Susanna, would like to know your source on high-speed rail since the Germans had it earlier and during WW2 proposed a Maglev by DRG!!! See my work: http://greyfalcon.us/FRANZ%20KRUCKENBERG%20SCHIENENZEPPELIN.htm

Up until about 1940 you could travel anywhere in the metro Kansas City area on interurban cars, steam trains or electric street cars within cities. By 1957 the last electric streetcar went out of service. I can only barely remember seeing one, as I was less than 4 years old at the time. Years later I saw one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was likely one of the old KC cars or one just like it. There is a fellow from North Carolina who comes to Kansas City every year to circulate a petition for a ballot amendment to have the city council build an urban electric transit system. The voters have spent enough money over the years holding these special elections, usually without success, to have laid some track along an old corridor and bought a trolley from a museum. The one time the voters actually approved light rail, as it's called here, the city council voted to overturn the results of the election. KC, area wise, is a huge place. Except for a couple of afternoon choke points, auto traffic is relatively quick and access good out to 40 or 50 km from town to neighboring towns and suburbs. Gasoline is getting expensive by historical US standards, but I've noticed my giant 1986 Chrysler is dwarfed on the parking lots by fleets of tall pickup trucks and Sport Utilities.

the whole HS rail network alternative will NEVER work in the USA. We are a nation on the move in VEHICLES and use the German invention of the ICE car and Autobahn system for transit. Europe has many old cities with cobblestone streets and cannot take heavy transit, so they opt for the train system to preserve their cities and large beautiful areas while the US overdevelops all the land due to capitalism. I say again that capitalism in the end is far worse than Nazism, fascism, cimmunism, or socialism. It is the worship of money over God and we export that to the far ends of the world. I can imagine in the far future Antarctica being reclaimed from the ice and there you would find Coke, a Starbucks, McDonalds, and every damn US consumer good that could be flown or shipped over. Good thing that the weather is so bad and that all the camps stay away from Nazi Neu Schwabenland ;-D

More German train materials: http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/Henschel.htm http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/German%20Steam%20Turbine%20Locomotives.htm http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/ODDITIES.htm

Rob, Schienenzeppelin (literally "rail zeppelin") was an experimental device - interesting, though! The first _regular_ high-speed train was American diesel powered "Pioneer Zephyr", which ran on average speed of 100 mph (160 km/h) and started regular service between Kansas City - Omaha - Lincoln in 1933. In Germany, the "Flying Hamburger" between Berlin and Hamburg started 1933, and ran regularly over 150 km/h (95 mph) speeds.The American "Zephyr" trains ran until 1960. The first electric fast speed train was Italian ETR 200, which entered service 1938. It looks surprisingly similar to modern Pendolino, and ran regularly on 200 km/h (120 mph) speeds.Japan's "Shinkansen" was the first regular fast rail network - specially designed for bullet trains.

There are a couple of aspects why rail transport is favoured in Europe and Japan. One is that rail transport seldom gets clogged. The capacities of airports and highways are lower than those of rail; they get crowded and clogged more easily. On railroads the solution is simple: use either faster trains, longer trains or double-decker cars. [Finland has opted the double-decker car option - which are also designed for fast speeds than conventional single-deckers]. Second aspect is that tracks require less land area than highways - both Japan and Europe are pretty densely built -, and are cheaper to build and maintain. Stations are already located in the centers of the cities, so existing infrastructure may be employed. Third aspect is that trains can be made to run on electricity, which makes them virtually pollution-less - the Finnish national railways use 658 GWh of juice each year, which equals the annual output of one 75 megawatt power plant. VR (the Finnish national railroad) has stated it ony purchases hydroelectric power. Electric engines may not posess the same romanticism as steam engines or the same appearance of raw power as diesels, but in a sense they are beautiful, streamlined thingies.

Susanna, I beg to disagree- your words were that the US developed the concept of HS rail and that is obviously and empiracally false since Germany had a prototype in 1919 and then the Rail Zeppelin (first designed bullet train in the world) that hit up to 145 mph in 1931- way before the US ever got that far. It was the Reichsbahn and the approaching war that decided the Rail Zeppelin's sad fate and yet even w/o passengers it ran routine routes between cities at speeds no US train could match and it never crashed. There was also the rival SVT design of 1938, but again with the war needs of a rail system, it was not to be for passenger trains. DRG had the first HS Maglev concept in WW2 for the SS to transport Jews to underground extermination facilities planned for 1946. They would be interconnected and the entire liquidation process and assets distribution system would be performed on the huge Spike Trains. Peenemunde also investigated HS Maglevs since they were working on a 15cm rail gun during WW2. Anyway the German Rail Zeppelin speed records stood until 1956 and the Japanese bullet trains still claimed the first were not.

Henschel -Wegmann 1936-39 passenger service up to 109 mph on steam tubine: http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/sunday-streamline-23

Beautiful pic of world's first bullet train, which was NOT Japanese in 1964, but German in 1930s: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_hVOW2U7K4-M/SUFnx5iHsuI/AAAAAAAAux4/GVR7_KfX-lM/4567u46tudtghjf.jpg

Here are some pics of the VR double-decker car: [Ed = second class, double-decker; Eds = second class, double-decker, special services] - http://www.vaiski.net/ed/index.html .Here a Sr2 pulling a double-decker Inter-City train: http://www.vaiski.net/ed/ic2ri.jpg

Commeth the German ICE 3: http://www.infrastructurist.com/wp-content/uploads/ice3-in-amsterdam.jpg

19th century station meets 21st century train :-)

The world’s first electric train was designed by the German scientist Werner von Siemens. It was shown at an international trade exhibition in Berlin in 1879. A Special track was built for the train which hauled up to thirty visitors at time around the exhibition. http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/publikationen/publications_pof/pof_spring_2004/electric_trains_article.htm

Proposed pre-war (1938) Nazi Maglev: http://archive.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page1314.html?theme=light