the distances are much longer, though I'd really like to see more of our long-haul freight being hauled by rail rather than truck. It's not uncommon for a fact

the distances are much longer, though I'd really like to see more of our long-haul freight being hauled by rail rather than truck. It's not uncommon for a factory in Oregon to ship something by truck on Friday and have it arrive in South Carolina on Monday. This is done by having a two-person team transport the trailer across the country. It would literally take weeks to accomplish the same thing by rail. There is not a single national railroad. Also I don't think the rail system could handle a large increase in traffic. For example, in the past some US railroads tore up existing parallel tracks. This saved them a lot of money on property tax, but required using a single track in both directions. That type of setup doesn't work well when freight volume increases.