ITT: Biggest railroad (and other transportation) blunders

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>>977129
Some more info on the criminal corporate conspiracy to destroy the Milwaukee Road.

>>977129
Can't fight big oil, broski.

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>>977133
Maybe not, but you can certainly expose them and their allies when they betray the American people for selfish gains.

I call it a blunder but the conspirators knew exactly what they were doing and made out pretty well, despite thousands of jobs lost and permanent damage to American infrastructure through their actions.

Do not respond to Milwaukee Road posters.
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>>977138
Everyone knows about it, but it's like a drug, you know it's bad but you think living without it is worse. So we all happily suck the oil jews dick,

>>977153
This is a transportation-related thread on the transportation board, why are you such a butthurt shitposter contributing nothing of value?

>>977159
I'd ask you the same thing. But first, take off your tinfoil hat.

Merika allowing whole cities to develop with little or no public transit infrastructure

1x fat bikes

>>977129
What a shit way to start a thread and guarantee that the thread will be total dogshit.

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The SPSF merger was a pretty bad idea but Santa Fe made out pretty well, since they stripped SP of all of its profitable real estate and subsidiaries during their brief marriage. They only had to hand back SP's physical railroad network and equipment after the merger was denied.

>>977270
>Merika allowing whole cities to destroy their whole public transit infrastructure
ftfy

>>977129
Not this fucking thread again.

>>977129
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956

>>977270

And GM actively destroying existing interurbans so that they can sell more buses, which they don't even make now.

Mirabel

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Penn Central

>>978520
What's that?

>>981342

It was meant to replace the original airport (Dorval), but many different factors made it a failure. It is now handling cargo and acts as a manufacturing base for Bombardier Aerospace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montr%C3%A9al%E2%80%93Mirabel_International_Airport

>>977129
Berlin's new Airport BER.

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Every city in the UK scrapping tramways back in the '50s and '60s, and now having to rebuild from scratch at great expense.

>>978517
You seriously believe that debunked bullshit? The vast majority failed because they had to start paying for electricity and were otherwise economically uncompetitive. Only a tiny number were actually killed by GM.

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these fuckers. fucking spaghettis

Also just never electrifying the Danish network

>>981379
Isn't there a similar airport in Spain?

>>984807

Well, at least the Mirabel is still being used on a regular (enough) basis. The one in Spain was much worse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_Central_Airport

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>>981557
>Also just never electrifying the Danish network
One line between Germany and Sweden is - but for some reason with 25 kV.

>>981557
At least when they work they are quite comfortable compared to other similar diesel units. when they work.....

Not electrifying the entire danish mainline (lacks the bit form Fredericia to Aalborg/Frederikshavn) as well as the regional network on Zealand is the biggest political scandal in our country's modern history.

>>986277
do you know why that is?

>>986450
Most likely? The Danes wented to have their engines and their national railroad company have a part of the business instead of just having German and Swedish trains through-running.

>>986468
>>986450
Many EMUs and locos are multivoltage capable these days, and 25 kV is considered the new standard.

the only good part of the pacific extension was the route through the cascades, the rest of the track had a worse profile compared to GN and NP.

GN's mainline is downhill form Marias Pass to the Columbia River; NP's line (now owned by MT Rail -Link) is downhill from Mulan pass to the Columbia River.

In contrast, MILW had passes at Loweth (Crazy Mountains), Pipestone (Tobacco Root Mountains), Taft (Bitterroot Mountains) and Beverly (Saddle Mountains). While the route may have been shorter in milage, steeper grades made travel time comparable to BN/NP. More assist divisions meant that margins were tighter, and that total train weight never exceeded 3000 tons, while BN could move 5000 tons with less motive power on a similar schedule.

I grew up in Montana. Nothing is on the MILW mainline except for Butte and Missoula, and NP got there first. Only 10% of the states grain output grows in the region served by MILW.

There's a reason why they never captured more than 15% of the market for the region, and why ROI was always around 1-2%--less than what they'd get sticking money in the bank. BN could use Snoqualmie to relive backlogs @ stevens pass, which was the plan until a trestle was knocked out in a rockslide. The rest of the line was built for local/regional traffic and population that never came

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Kuala Lumpur LRT

>made for Commonwealth games 1998
>2 initial lines; Ampang Lone (dubbed "STAR") and Kelana Jaya Line ("Putra")
>meant for tourist/spectators transit as well as to showcase Malaysia as a developed country(or at least as good as other tiger economy countries)
>while not totally built without foresight, (let alone a white elephant) the lines were built as standalone system and has minimal,if not nonexistent, connectivity with other public transport
>the two lines has no proper interchanges(until the extension project finally included one, almost 18 years later). Instead, the lines are connected with a monorail line (which is in even worse situation than the LRT lines)
>both lines use different signalling system, thus preventing switching of trains to another lines (because both lines were managed by 2 different companies)
>previous administration wouldn't bother with public transport, and focused on building more motorways instead

Well at least the entire infrastructure is solid, suggesting that they didn'tt cheapened out on construction materials/standard.

Both companies who ran the lines went under and the government are forced to bail them out (and consolidate both lines state-owned companies).

Both lines underwent massive expansion/modernization programme and after more than 6 years (and several billion dollars) later, while the LRT service has improved leaps and bounds compared to 18 years ago, the day zero design flaw is still evident (too many interchanges between the lines, some of the stations are underutilised and others). They tried to alleviate the problems by introducing more feeder buses but, while the feeder buses are a great substitute, it felt like a temporary, duct tape solution

The circle line (to connect both LRT lines as well as another new LRT line and 2 new MRT lines) is under the design phase. Lets hope that they take the lesson to heart this time

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>>987796
>the rest of the track had a worse profile compared to GN and NP.

Which is why MILW electrified the mountain passes and operating costs under electrification weren't bad considering. Operating costs after de-electrification skyrocketed, which helped management justify abandonment just 6 years later.

It's true that MILW had shitty on-line traffic in the West. But if you consider that most railroad profits were made with longer distance shipments and bridge traffic, the Milwaukee Road's route from the Pacific to Chicago makes sense. Especially after WW2, when shipments to and from the Pacific increased in frequency and tonnage, the Milwaukee Road took a healthy share of that traffic and for awhile was the most profitable road in the PNW. In the 1960s and early 1970s MILW won the majority of trans-Pacific traffic and their success in this respect made the newly formed BN eager to eliminate MILW as a competitor.

>>987916

sure, electrification kept operating costs in check but you still needed more locomotive hours to move freight across the MILW mainline than across either NP or GN.

The largest issue with tight margins was that the pacific extension never received extensive modernization. it was super modern....in 1920. UP and GN consistently added sidings, upgraded signaling, and rerouting to better grades. in contrast, MILW had lots of dark track with sporadic block signal coverage, but what was under block signaling had to be manually controlled.

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Australian states run on different gauge and track widths. There's no train that goes the full east coast and no trans-continental railway. Its frankly disgusting.

>>988194
>no trans-continental railway
You could have had if trans Australian railway would have been build in cape gauge or dual gauge, then you could have had no gauge breaks from Cairms to Darwin to Perth.