Insane to think that we had a better rail network in the 20s its a shame that the irish government didn’t have the foresight to see that tearing up a decent rail network was a bad idea. Now we’re spending millions to get back a fraction of what there once was

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1. All Western countries (and some more) had more railways in the 1920s than they do now. Many countries has private railways run as a business that went bankrupt as cars became more widespread, because they were not financially viable. The alternative was for the governments to take over and pay for *all* of them, which was not possible. So the governments picked the actually good ones and tore down the rest. Obviously, in some places it was done with better judgement and in others not so much.

2. Pretty much all countries used to have better rail transport because cars, buses and airplanes weren’t really a thing.

3. Too much profit on oil probably

4. [deleted]

5. I believe that more trains, passenger and industrial, and a lot more tracks, could really solve a lot of our problems.

   But I’m a huge train nerd so this is not an unbiased opinion.

6. Our population kept falling from the famine until the 1960s to 3.1 million and only started recovering then. There just weren’t enough passengers for those rail lines. Buses were also seen as being more flexible.

7. You didn’t have a “better” rail network. You just had more rail. But it wasn’t better, it was old crooked, one-way rails for steam engines moving at 20km/h.

   Every country had these because roads couldn’t carry trucks yet, that’s all.

8. How much of that rail was viable?

9. Had those rails been kept intact but abandoned, they’d still need to be completely torn up and replaced end to end to match today’s standards for gauge, comfort, safety, speed, and technology, before they could be put to use.