HSR In The United States
Suffers from several starting problems:
First diesel trains top out at around 125mph, which means true high speeds require electric power and that is something rare in the United States outside a few areas. Aside from parts of the former Pennsy NEC, there are few electrified rail lines in the states. Those ROWs that were electrified such as the fromer Milwaukee Road, ripped out that infrastructure long ago. This is one of the reasons building a HSR is so expensive. Aside from that not many communites are egar to have all those poles/cantenarys up and down their areas. Europe had the benefit of moving from steam locomotives almost straight to electric power after the war mainly because petrol is dear on that side of the pond, with no natural resource. Contrasted with the United States which had ample supplies of petrol which made diesel cheaper than over head electrical power (in essence diesel locomotives are electric powered, just they produce such power internally rather than taking it from wire/tracks). Heck at the time diesels were taking over from steam petrol was cheaper than coal, which was another reason for the switch over.
HSR really "works" when the distances travelled are around a 300 mile radius between points. In highly developed urban areas of the Northeast such as between Washington DC and Boston for instance. Or Chicago and the Twin Cities. After the 300 mile distance benefits begin to fall off as planes are faster. One would probably have to sell passengers on the ease of travel or other benefits verus air travel to make it work, and one would need a steady stream of passengers.
Railroad Services and Their Decline:
As stated passenger service for most railroads broke even at best or was a loss even at the best of times. Reason it was there is that the government mandated all Class I RRs have passenger service. Indeed any RR with any pretentions of being a major RR wanted a first class passenger service as sort of "bragging rights". Well that service costs money, and increasingly RRs were in short supply. Labour laws and other costs made staffing and running things such as dining cars and or offering food service very expensive. Prices even by the day's standards weren't cheap either, and many people simply packed a box lunch/meal to take along (rather like flying today), instead of paying for food on the train. First class passengers on long distance trains were another story, but after the 1960's or so they pretty much had switched over to air travel (the Jet Age),along with much of the businessman travel. This left not much of a large paying market for many services such as a dining car. Well let us say what passengers that were left were willing/afford to pay was not what it cost the RR to provide the service. So things began to go by the wayside.
Speaking of Big Boys!
Those were some remarkable locomotives, but ate coal and drank water. IIRC didn't get more than 30 miles or so before requiring a recoaling/water. That simply wouldn't do today as freight customers want goods moved fast. If trains are to compete they must be as if not more reliable and fast as trucks, their main competition. Remember also steam locomotives cannot be kept in constant travel. After a period of time (weekly or monthly), the locomotive must be taken out of service for a "shed day", where her fires are dropped, and he boilers cleaned amoung other things. Think of a steam locomotive as one large steam boiler on wheels and you get the idea of what sort of maintainence must be done. Just has coal fired home boilers need work, so do steam engines. There is no getting around diesel locomotives are easier and cheaper to run than steam. They are mostly vastly more reliable than steam engines and have a very long life span with less work needed.
What diesel locomotive makers got railroads to look at was instead of having one or maybe two huge steam locomotives to haul a heavy train, diesels could be lashed up in units to create the horsepower needed for a particular train. This is still how it's done today. A RR take alook at the load and allocates the head end power (or in case of very heavy freights end and middle power as well),required for the job. Beauty of diesels is one man can control all the engines in the lash up, rather than several steam locomotives each with it's own engineer.
HSR is somewhat easier to build in Europe and other places as there isn't a NIMBY tradition and people running to courts that will block the project. By and large the State decides what is required and goes about it,in a democratic fashion, but still it is less bothersome when compared to the United States. To build a HSR between say Washington DC and Boston involves no less than several states, each with their own views and can block any project. The only way around this would be for the federal government to step in with some sort of eminent domain powers, but that is a very touchy matter.
Final thing to consider is that Americans are simple too wedded to driving short and in some cases even long distances to really embrace rail travel in large numbers ever again. It would take a HUGE shift in popular thinking to bring about a change. Look at all the people who could take mass transit or commuter RR to work, yet insist on driving. They respond they simply like their own space and being in control of their travel.
