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Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Wasn't that the problem? While much of the world needed to rebuild following the war, the United States did not, and was the biggest benefactor from the war and the post-war reconstruction in other countries. The amount of wealth that was generated made it seem that endless private transportation was possible. This lasted perhaps 25 years, just long enough to send passenger rail service and urban public transportation into a death spiral.
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America invested in its railroads during the war to move war materials as needed. America's railroads were not bombed into oblivion. America's railroads did not need rebuilding or expansion.
Returning soldiers and sailors knew why America won the war, great resupply. Our WW2 infantry was almost exclusively mechanized, we did not rely as much on horses, mules, oxens, and other beasts of burden as our enemies. We built more merchant ships than ever, more DC3 and DC4 airplanes than ever, more Red Ball Express trucks than ever, and the US military was about to release a huge amount of them to the market as war surplus. There were few surplus trains around. So guess what was needed to be built to accommodate all the war surplus equipment, more railroads or more highways?
A good part of the US military was associate with supply than actual front line war fighting units. We were about to have more trained unemployed Red Ball Express truck drivers than fighting men, or train engineers.
The number one shortage my dad has stated so many times the returning to workplace ex soldiers and ex sailors faced after the war was a severed lack of housing for their new families. There were no FHA, FEMA, HUD, EPA, or other government planning alphabetic soup agencies around at the time, private enterprise was expected to solve these problems. So what did the banks wish to invest in? First of all Homes, and secondly all the stuff we desired to Fill our homes with.
So where did the homebuilders build the homes? in a more expensive land nearer city centers brownfield that was once a factory, or in a greenfield in suburbia where the land was cheap? What is the quickest way to get the new homeowners from their new homes in suburbia to their new jobs at factories in city centers, build a new road or build a new train corridor?
I enjoy looking back on history debates taking place today arguing what would have been better back then, but almost all the discussions participants have blinders on. They look at what could have been instead of what was really happening back then. Take your blinders off.
The fact remains that immediately after the war and for a decade afterwards, trains were in great shape; there were other things that needed higher priority to be fixed.