America's Trains in a New War

A Guest Editorial by John Sipple

I was born in 1942 and was raised in the shadow of the war that then raged. Afterward, as a boy, there came Korea. As a young man, an entire decade was consumed by Vietnam. A remarkable hiatus from major war ensued which was broken by Desert Storm. Today we stand on the threshold of a new war, this one as different from the others as each of them was in its time. In every war, America has been forced to make some adaptations, and — to the extent that we made those changes with grace and power — we prevailed.

Each war gives us a new enemy and a new way to fight. WWI meant trenches on the ground, kite-like planes in the air, and battleships at sea. Tanks were new, funny-looking things. WWII saw armies of tanks racing over trenchless battlefields, armadas of shiny planes in the air, many of them launched from aircraft carriers that hadn’t existed in the earlier war. By Vietnam, tanks were mostly gone and helicopters were ascendant. In the Persian Gulf, tanks reappeared along with armadas of planes. So it goes, and we do what we have to.

During America’s grim Civil War, trains rose to power as conveyors of troops and war materiel. In WWI, railroads reached their zenith in track mileage only to be nationalized into the United States Railway Administration. By WWII, our railroads carried twice as much as the prior war and yet did it with less track and rolling stock. In Korea, trains were still an important method of conveyance, though the rush to highway and airway was under way in a big way. During Vietnam, railroads carried war equipment but no one wanted to lavish any pride on our military or war machine and so this service was overlooked. Come Desert Storm, railroads had regained some popularity as they transported the awesome Abrams M1 tanks to their departure points.

As we fight a war against terrorists, it is clear that their opening attack damaged air travel as much as anything else. Not only was passenger air transport shut down, so was air freight. In the months and even years to come, air travel will not be the grand solution that it once was because ponderous security will weigh it down. In spite of the airline bailout in Congress, people will have to consider other modes of travel. They will turn to their cars, always so handy with 2.3 of them out in the driveway. At some point, Americans will rediscover rail passenger service.

Never have railroads been more ready to serve than today. Rising from the ashes of destructive mergers and robber-baron legacies, our trains have united with trucks and ships to form one of the most comprehensive freight systems on the planet. The Unites States is a truly immense place, and serving an area our size is a daunting task, yet railroads do it every day. As less freight moves by plane, more will be rolling on the ground and intermodal service is ready to handle it.

Passenger traffic has not been so lucky. Amtrak, God bless it, tries as hard as it can, but it is waging an uphill battle. It has no mainline track of its own and relies on freight railroads to provide the right-of-way. Freight and passenger traffic travel differently, although they now have more in common than ever before. Amtrak pays freight railroads for using their track; some of them welcome this revenue, while others consider Amtrak to be a pain in the neck. I recently rode Amtrak’s Empire Builder from Portland to Chicago and back, a wonderful odyssey. The train was packed, even though it required two and a half days to make the journey. I could have flown the distance in just a few hours. But that was July, before the events of September 11, 2001.

European friends just can’t get used to the idea that our trains take so long to get places and are so poorly funded. First of all, you could drop most of Western Europe inside America several times over. Second, while the Empire Builder often raced along at 79 miles per hour (the highest speed allowed on BNSF tracks), it sometimes gets parked on sidings. The connecting Coast Starlight had been delayed on my trip — according to passengers on the train — by a man who had become drunk and deranged, requiring the train to be stopped in Northern California while law enforcement took the miscreant away. We had to take a bus up from Eugene, Oregon to catch the Empire Builder on time. These are things which Amtrak cannot control.

Amtrak’s Acela high-speed train plies the Eastern Seaboard with a potential up to 150 miles per hour, and yet it trundles along at ten or twenty in many places where the track is a mess and freight traffic blocks the way. Meanwhile, Congress has decreed that Amtrak shall have a black number on its bottom line by 2003.

As Congress and the President prepare to unleash the nation’s checkbook against the forces of terrorism, they ought to plan to spend some money to upgrade passenger rail travel without degrading freight rail traffic. It is long past time for us to build a really cool, high-speed passenger rail system in our country (see our Train-Tech Forum in this and the previous issue for more details.) This will mean building an isolated track that does not intersect with other forms of ground transport — no grade crossings. The attempts by Amtrak to upgrade sections of freight rail to high speed standards has been the only game in town for a while, but we really need to think of constructing an elevated track, above and apart from what exists today, for the exclusive use of Amtrak. It won’t be cheap, and it would take years to build, but it is what we need.

We have learned that when war comes, so does change. Instead of it being a furious, destructive force, this change can be the door into something of great value that will endure for decades to come. After all, our current highway system is the product of changes during World War II. A new, national passenger rail system won’t be cheap or easy, but it is the sort of constructive productivity that has made America great — and will keep her that way.


John Sipple
Contributing Editor