>The San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway (reporting mark SDAE) is a short-line American railroad founded in 1932 as the successor to the San Diego and Arizona Railway (SD&A), which was founded in 1906 by entrepreneur John Spreckels. Dubbed "The Impossible Railroad" by many engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges involved, the line was established in part to provide San Diego with a direct rail link to the east by connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad lines in El Centro, California.
>the railroad has a checkered history, with periodic disruptions in service to rockslides, storms, fires, and derailments, and has never been profitable
>the line ceased being used in its entirety decades ago and has been bounced around by owner to owner ever since
>at present, only a fraction of the line in San Diego, Mexico, and Campo is actively used, with the rest being left to decay

Here's my questions:

1. Were the "Impossible Railroad's" issues inherent to the climate and terrain, or more so the technological/economic limitations at the time of its construction (the railroad was built with anachronistic infrastructure such as wooden trestles)?

2. If funding could secured, would it be possible to rehabilitate or even rebuild the line in its entirety using modern engineering techniques to negate the hazards that plagued its previous incarnations?

3. What services could be provided to make the line economical, or even turn an actual profit? Obviously there's tourism, Carrizo Gorge attracts thousands of tourists a year (many of whom come to gawk at the ruins of the railway). I recently found out that the Mexican portion of the line is used to host the Tijuana-Tecate Tourist Train (pic related, several gallery cars that were originally intended for it but ultimately left unused) and has proven quite popular. But I'm also wondering industries could be served or even if a US-Mexico commuter service would be feasible (ignoring current diplomatic issues)

There only way possible I'd to get some sort of public private funding or mexican government subsidy.

There's a Toyota and Panasonic factory along that line for export to the usa.

Caltrops did a study and estimated the cost at 500 million. That seems low as it would require 17 tunnels and 40 bridges redone plus the GOAT canyon gorge.

If Mexico wasn't a failed state, yes that's something they could do. As it stands its easier to pass thru San ysidro via car with a migrant worker pass thru as a Mexican commuting from tj to sd.

>>2038870 (OP)
The real money-maker in railroads has never been people, it's been freight. In addition to having freight, all the passenger rail of the past also did lucrative business with the U.S. Mail service and others, which they stopped doing in the 1970s. You'd basically have to have Northeast Corridor Amtrak numbers to break-even.

>>2039300
so why is trucking cheaper than rail most of the time? is it because trucking companies don't have to eat the cost of maintaining the highways?

>>2039301
A truck hold about 4.5x less cargo than a rail car.

>>2039302
so it should be more expensive then, yes?

>>2039301
>so why is trucking cheaper than rail most of the time?
A majority of truck shipments are local or regional, which is a segment railroads aren't competitive with for fairly obvious reasons.

It's faster and requires less manpower to move a trailer than a rail car. Trains get switched and serviced in route by a nearly completely unionized labor force plus all of the managerial positions associated you don't really think about. It takes a lot more man-hours to move a boxcar 1000 miles than a truck trailer. Also, rail can't practically do LTL which is a big segment of the trucking market. However, the advantages of trucking start to falter when the freight is high volume, high tonnage, or both.

Having the government handle the transportation network's construction and maintenance certainly helps trucks out. A trucking company can have a national presence with only a handful of facilities-impossible with a railroad. Additionally there's a lot more regulatory overhead with rail than there is in the trucking industry, the result of which is increased labor costs.

Railroads really only want customers that can guarantee them that the shipper will order a certain amount of cars per week or month. They value that certainty. If the shipper doesn't need a car that week they'll likely pay a penalty to the railroad. Typically that's not the case for trucks. Overall trucks offer more flexibility to shippers than railroads can.

That said freight rail has a healthy modal share in the US and Canada. In Europe and Japan, nations with passenger rail systems far ahead of the US, rail freight's modal share is much lower--mainly because so much high volume/high tonnage cargo can be effectively moved by ship or barge (and their trucks have higher gross tonnages iirc). In those locations, marine traffic is somewhat analogous to freight rail in North America, although I'm being fast and loose with that comparison.

>>2039301
>so why is trucking cheaper than rail most of the time?
There's lots of reasons:
>trains, no matter the size, need a fixed number of crew, trucking can be done by a single person
>easier to carry smaller loads (by "smaller" I mean "not dozens of cars of the same material")
>stopping and backing up a train is difficult and costly
>truck loading docks take up far less space than railroad loading docks and can easily get things in and out
>last mile problem solved, you can go from production line to retail store without ever taking cargo outside

>>2038923
I think one of the big challenges of the line is precisely that it straddles the
border, so it reduces the incentives for national grants/ subsidies.

>>2038870 (OP)
3.San Diego has a fantastic port, but any goods imported and put on rail have to go via LA's congested routes and passes. If the line were functional and up to modern standards it would see a decent amount of intermodal port traffic.

Absent a rebuilding of the line, it should be used for importing sand and gravel to perennially aggregate starved SoCal.

>>2039301
>so why is trucking cheaper than rail most of the time?

1. Trucks are dirt cheap and practically unregulated compared to railways.

2. Truckers are cheaper than railway employees (who are usually unionized nowadays)

bump for interest

>>2038870 (OP)
>What services could be provided to make the line economical, or even turn an actual profit?

The underlying problem of rail vs. road is that the government heavily subsidizes roads at the will of the people. Infrastructure needed for trucking is, from the POV of a trucking company, free. You only pay wages, wear of equipment, and some lip service tolls for some roads. But the opportunity awarded for having a strip of tarmac from point A to point B is, in fact, free.

As such, the government would either need to subsidize railroads or entirely rely on privately funded roads to level the playing field. For a variety of reasons, neither of these is going to happen. As a result, railroads are only profitable where trucks simply can't cope with the magnitude of transported goods.

>>2039300
>The real money-maker in railroads has never been people, it's been freight.

Until railroads had a de facto monopoly on long-distance travel and passenger traffic was a side-hustle of freight movement, it was quite lucrative. Commuter services - I can't tell. But I reckon they were doing well. However, it was GG when the government started to pave the world from anywhere to anywhere.

>>2039310
>It's faster and requires less manpower to move a trailer than a rail car.

No. It is more time-consuming. Trucking involves more people per tonne of freight-mile. But fuel is cheap, so is labor. Trucks don't deal with the maintenance of infrastructure and are faster. You can ship a pallet of doodads from Seattle to Tampa in less than a week. Three days, I reckon. Railroads may move it cheaper, but it's going to be weeks before it gets there.

American railroads would need to develop a faster way to get things moving, with some hybrid truck-rail-truck system of containerized traffic. But - American railroads ( and railroads in general ) are so heavily skewed towards slow-tonnage that it ain't gonna happen for decades.

>>2044527
>Until railroads had a de facto monopoly on long-distance travel and passenger traffic was a side-hustle of freight movement, it was quite lucrative.

Correction: "When railroads had a de facto monopoly...".

>>2039301
The real answer is: If you account for all costs, it is not. But trucking uses a lot of infrastructure and causes a lot of environmental damage that isn't attributed to it. It's subsidized with trillions of tax payer dollars.

>>2044529
>No. It is more time-consuming. Trucking involves more people per tonne of freight-mile.
Untrue in the US

>But fuel is cheap, so is labor.
Those are the two biggest costs to railroads and trucking companies

>>2044527
>As such, the government would either need to subsidize railroads or entirely rely on privately funded roads to level the playing field. For a variety of reasons, neither of these is going to happen. As a result, railroads are only profitable where trucks simply can't cope with the magnitude of transported goods.
I like how you conveniently forgot about how distribution centers and how many different trucks they can service, all going to different areas afterwards. Unless you have a single commodity you cannot match that in rail.

>>2038870 (OP)

They'd have to basically rebuild the entire railroad at this point

>>2046756
Unfortunately the truth.
The cars in OP's pic are marooned on that siding because tunnel number three, which was briefly daylighted in 2016, had a landslide that blocked the track there, by the border near Tecate. And of course several of the tunnels in the Carrizo gorge are still blocked.

Even if the line were operable, I'd question its suitability for modern freight operations, given the tight curves and wooden trestles.

Maybe one day Mexico will rebuild the line to be entirely south of the border so Tijuana can be properly linked to the Mexican rail network

>>2046920
>The cars in OP's pic are marooned on that siding because tunnel number three, which was briefly daylighted in 2016, had a landslide that blocked the track there

So the coaches got shunted there, had the tunnel collapse, and the owners just went "fuck it" and left them there to rot? Have they really only been there since 2016? They look to be in absolutely awful condition and I imagine they had to have been originally at least half-decent when they were acquired from Metra since they were intended for future use.

>Even if the line were operable, I'd question its suitability for modern freight operations, given the tight curves and wooden trestles.

The wooden trestles would definitely need to go because they wouldn't be able to handle the weight of modern rolling stock. The curves could probably be handled with running at reduced speeds and using non-intermodal rolling stock (i.e. box cars).

Thankfully with passenger cars, it wouldn't be an issue.

>>2046941
>The curves could probably be handled with running at reduced speeds and using non-intermodal rolling stock (i.e. box cars).
Why

>>2047056
He's just making shit up. He has no idea.

>>2047056

Stacking giant containers on top of a flatbed isn't exactly a model for stability when running curves

>>2049118
I think it's more like >>2047060 said.

>>2049121
Nope, it's a bunch of dumb horseshit. People here have no clue what they're talking about in most things related to railroading. I've literally seen morons on here say "diesel locomotives are so efficient because they run the engine at the same speed."