You need a lot of cargo heading into the same direction for railways to work. Without a direct connection it's still cheaper but much slower than rail. Automate

You need a lot of cargo heading into the same direction for railways to work. Without a direct connection it's still cheaper but much slower than rail. Automated truck "trains" could work well for much less volume, i.e. 3-5 trucks going between two cities. Fedex and UPS would be well suited to that, they can easily pool a few trucks that have 95%+ route overlap and drive roughly at the same time.