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TomTrain: There's two parts to your question -- method of operation and multiple main track. First, method of operation. What you're describing railroads already have: it's TWC and DTC. Problems: 1. TWC and DTC do not have track circuits unless equipped with Automatic Block Signals, so there's not much savings there. No track circuits, no broken rail or open-switch protection. 2. CTC gives you remote-control switches; without them, the train has to stop to line itself into a siding. That's 20 minutes lost each time. Worse, the switch stays lined behind you, because you have no caboose, so the next train has to stop to make it "normal" for the main track. It gets a 20-minute hit, too. 3. No signaling means no protection from broken rails or open switches, so the FRA restricts you to 49 mph for freight instead of the 79 mph you can get in CTC. 4. No signaling means no protection from following trains (flagmen are SO gone), so trains can't follow closely like they can with signaling. 5. Dispatcher workloads very quickly become intense, so territories become smaller. Basically, a CTC dispatcher can handle three times the trains as a DTC dispatcher. It was much less work to dispatch 35 trains at once between Kansas City and De Queen, Arkansas, with CTC, than 10 trains at once between Vicksburg, Miss., and Shreveport, La., which is about one-third the distance. In short, CTC allows you to run 80 trains a day on single-track. BNSF does it! TWC and DTC max out at about 35 trains a day, and those trains are running at much slower speeds with less safety. Now, multiple track. CTC is very expensive to install, but once installed it's essentially zero maintenance, because code lines are no longer used (the code travels in the rail). Track, on the other hand, is fantastically expensive to maintain. 75% of the railroad revenue dollar goes to track maintenance. Track requires maintenance even if traffic levels go toward zero, as constant surfacing is necessary as frost goes in and out of the ground, as water tables rise and fall, as precipitation falls and runs off, etc. Rocks fall on track, trees fall on track, vehicles and old appliances fall onto track, ad infinitum. Lastly, "practice is proof." Railroads since at least 1950 have preferred CTC single track over dark double track. There has been in the last 70 years only ONE significant stretch of dark double track in the U.S. between Pueblo and Walsenburg, Colo.
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