Laid-up new trains

...the lovers are Swiss and the whole thing is organised by the Italians.

The US will send its finest Olympic soccer team to assist.

Meanwhile Alstom blames the US track, they've been complaining about US track since 1977.

Man the CC 21000 was an aggressively ugly locomotive, particularly in red white & blue.

Hard to imagine those things pulling passenger trains around for decades here vs the RC4-derived AEM-7 meatballs.

Damn trains. Can't make themselves, lay their own track, or do any maintenance.

At least they can drive.

RL

I've seen a train laying its own track. Far quicker than doing it by hand. They're also used to maintain the track by looking for dips & humps & jiggling the ballast to level the track. Times have changed.

Are you talking about new track and not replacing track or cross ties?

They have maintenance equipment that lifts the rails, cuts the ties in half, pulls out the two cross tie pieces, then inserts a new cross tie and drives the spikes. That's pretty cool to watch.

I've never seen this lay new track, but I'm sure they have that. It's just not used much in the US.

the kit I've seen was laying new track. It levelled the ballast by pressing while jiggling it, then put down a section of track with ties already on. More ballast. And it could level existing track with the jiggling fingers.