Aaaaaughhhhhhh THIS

@Geoastrocat

Here's the infuriating thing though, most of America ALREADY DOES live next to train tracks, or not far away. It's not a matter of building more lines, it's a matter of using them. America has the largest railroad network in the world by a huge margin; it's almost the size of the next two largest networks combined. The problem is that, unlike those countries and nearly every other industrialized nation, American railroads are owned and operated almost entirely by for-profit corporations whose sole concern is to be as profitable as possible. And moving freight is far more profitable, and far less hassle, than moving people (the accounting methods used for the first point are...not always the most objective). So these 6 massive duopolistic railroad companies choose to only move freight instead. As far as I know, there is nothing legally stopping these freight railroads from running their own passenger trains, like they used to do before 1971; Brightline in Florida and the Alaska Railroad (where I was a conductor briefly) both do quite good passenger business, and Brightline doesn't even own its tracks. In fact, when Amtrak first started up in 1971, there was a fee that railroads had to pay in order to get Amtrak to take over their passenger trains. Some railroads, like the Rock Island, could not afford the fee; others, like the Southern and the Rio Grande, chose to continue to operate their own passenger trains for a few years. But eventually they too threw in the towel, and now Amtrak is all we got.

"ohhh wahhh the problem with building out america's rail network is that nobody wants to live next to train tracks-" I DO BITCH!!!!!!!! #I<3INDUSTRIALNOISES #SEXWITHATRAIN

Cleopatra | John William Waterhouse

An Egyptian Pottery Seller near Gizeh | Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann

The Sorceress | Georges Merle

Empress Theodora | Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant

Ok wait let her speak

I have no mouth and I must scream