96 people died building the Hoover Dam [1]. It was built 'on time and on budget' to a great extent at the expense of lives.
That's a lot of deaths.
For comparison, only 147 total coalition deaths as a result of combat with the enemy [2] in the 1991 Gulf war, involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, the liberation of Kuwait and the overrunning of most of Iraq.
And that's saying nothing of the comp, overtime and other externalized issues.
Of course, the failure of rail is pretty bad and we need to learn, but we can't hold the Hoover Dam up as 'the example'.
[1] https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fatal.html