Notably the system was almost entirely built by these private companies, and basically no progress occurred after the unification.
Instead, the system has decayed.
A demonstration of how competition fuels progress in infrastructure.
Instead, the system has decayed.
A demonstration of how competition fuels progress in infrastructure.
Those earlier companies had the ability to do mostly what they wanted, including building incredibly piss-poor stations that can't withstand the test of time, while making it near impossible to renovate the station because they cut every corner possible and included no bypass tracks.
America does build infrastructure painfully slowly and bureaucratically, but I don't think we're ever getting the early-1900s esque speed of building back at a price public entities will pay (or a price private entities could ever realisticlaly recoup). Enough rules have been written in blood to ensure that.