Talk:Rail transport

Name

Just wondering if railway is a better title than 'railroad'. If the latter is just the U.S. equivalent of the former, fine; but when I think of 'railroad' what comes to mind is North American trains covering long distances, often carrying heavy freight, only occasional journeys (when I Amtraked and VIA-Railed, the train coming through seemed to be a major event, unlike in Europe) etc., while 'railway' to me is a broader term, encompassing pleasure rail trips as well as long-distance railroads. John Stephenson 04:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The first sentence of this article seems to resolve the issue just fine. Russell D. Jones 00:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

High-speed rail?

The article has "For long-distance passenger transport, however, airlines have displaced rail travel in many areas." OK, but that is far from the whole story. Europe, Japan, Korea and China [1] all have substantial networks of high-speed trains. China are planning to extend their network South to Singapore and West to Moscow. Even the US is talking of building some such lines, albeit on a smaller scale and at lower speeds. Sandy Harris 05:59, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it depends on how you define 'long-distance'. In parts of europe and Japan, the reverse effect has been observed on high-speed lines between 250-400 km in length. In these cases, the railway has become competitive with air travel by means of a fast travel time and not having to check in at least one hour before the flight takes-off. As an example, travel between London and Paris (via the Channel Tunnel) is now mainly done by train. So I think it can be stated that for 'medium-distance' travel that high-speed rail has started to displace air travel as the primary mode. - Alan Horton 11:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)