Rail roads and their tracks.

[Rockbadchild]

The Flett Tunnel is located in Shabaqua 39 miles (63 km) northwest of Thunder Bay in Ontario’s Superior Country. This is a 3.1 miles (5 km) out and back trail that leads to the abandoned 630 foot (192 m) long Flett Railway Tunnel

 

[Hay Dude]

Hard to imagine this was a thriving Rail line along the Canal in NJ.
Picture at Lambertville Station Restaurant looking up the Canal and the last bit of rail left.
View attachment 864641

Yeah the old railroads are disappearing fast in the mid atlantic rustbelt!
Little use left for them now that mining, lumber and manufacturing are all but gone.
Thought Natural Gas might be a new source of business in PA/Ohio/WV, but, well, you know how fossil fuels are being eliminated now, too!

 

[MossRoad]

Hard to imagine this was a thriving Rail line along the Canal in NJ.
Picture at Lambertville Station Restaurant looking up the Canal and the last bit of rail left.
View attachment 864641

Read this article from 1858 touting the virtues of canals over railroads.

Canals Versus Railroads

www.scientificamerican.com

Shortly after that most canals in the US were killed by railroads.

Fast forward to the 1930s when trucking started taking bites out of rail freight. Then throw in the interstate highway system after WWII. Trucking took a huge bite out of rail.

Rail shines at bulk transport.

This wiki article explains it pretty well. The multiple bankruptcies and mergers in the 70s and 80, Amtrak, ConRail, etc... that came out of the Penn Central failure.

As I've mentioned many times before, there used to be multiple routes between the same places due to so many different railroads that were competing with each other. As they merged, they didn't need multiple routes, so they kept one route and the other 2-3 redundant routes were abandoned.

That's the main reason there are so many abandoned intercity lines across the country, particularly in the northeast corner of the US.

Trucking is why there are so many abandoned intracity lines in urban areas.

History of rail transportation in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Hay Dude]

I can’t name one Railroad track in my area where a competitor had another Railroad track competing with it and it was abandoned or removed.

We have single or sometimes twin tracks running one short route and many are abandoned. They are abandoned because the main businesses along the route closed and moved overseas or just plain old closed because their business died. You can still see the businesses that have been closed for decades along the tracks and the subsequent loss of railroad revenue that goes down with it (National Rolling Mills, Lexington Lumber, etc.)

You can show all the wicked-pedia links you want, but I physically live and see what’s going on in my area- businesses closed and the rail transportation in the business corridor closed soon thereafter.

Now there may be instances where 100 years ago more efficient, straighter, faster routes were built to replace slow, winding routes, but every abandoned railroad in MY area was a single abandoned route with no “parallel” competition.

I say trucking was the main reason that railroads died with rust belt bankruptcies being a close second in MY area.

 

[MossRoad]

Unfortunately for you, southeast Pennsylvania is the epicenter of failed railroads. They have been failing there since the 20's. That's 1920's, not 2020's. Mostly due to the coal industry.

They failed in the 20's and were scrapped in the 70's.

"Since the 1920s Pennsylvania has lost about 57% of its rail infrastructure due to so many abandonments of anthracite railroads and low-density branch/secondary lines."

Pennsylvania Railroads: Once Boasting 11,500+ Miles Of Track

Pennsylvania railroads date back to the Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad of 1827 and nearly every major eastern line could once be found there. The state's importance has not diminished today.

www.american-rails.com

Low density is not profitable.

 

[ArlyA]

Gary Ind USS mill trains. Gives you an idea how steel is made there.