What happened to the Erie RR Buffalo - Chicago

[Overmod]

charlie hebdo

Overmod

the 'rest' of the old South Pennsylvania grade

I thought that became the Penn Turnpike.

 

Some of it did.  It's the 'rest' of the South Penn that I was talking about.  I had thought it was intended as the same kind of super railroad that Truesdale's Lackawanna Cutoff improvements were, only with Vanderbilt and Carnegie money -- it turns out that the actual railroad was distressingly compromised as far as high speed would be concerned.  I recall there being pretty good route maps and analyses accessible via the Web.

 

I imagine a decent RoW could still be cobbled out of several abandoned/underused lines.

 

They would have to be straight as hell, with the ability to do compensated vertical curvature cheap.  I suspect there aren't many ancient RoWs that match the peculiar requirements for true HSR.  On the other hand, some of the ones being discussed in the Indiana non-railbanking thread might clearly qualify for high 'enough' regional speed to be part of, not just feeders to, a high-speed network.