@breezinup posted:You may want to write to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or the like and ask them if they'd be interested in putting up the tens of millions of dollars it would take do carry out such a project.
Make that hundreds of millions. It ain’t gonna happen.
@Allegheny posted:With so many abandoned ROW's across the country, couldn't some of these be linked together to form a line onto which these engines may run without having to have a lot of access on a Class 1 railroad?
When the big roads spun off all those short lines and regionals, they made very sure there would be no way to “reconnect” them into a competing railroad. Strategic pieces of railroads were removed in many places, just to make sure. Probably the best example was the removal of the ex-Erie’s bridge over Interstate 75 in western Ohio.
Reconnecting a few of them would likely be impossible because in many cases the railroads gave up their ownership of the underlying property where they removed their tracks and it reverted back to the original owners.
Even if it was logistically possible, the railroad itself would need new ties, maybe some new rail, and an operating staff to bring it back to service. Where does the money come to pay for the track work and the staff? The profit from steam excursions wouldn’t cover payroll for a week.
