In United States railroading, the term national rail network refers to the entire network of interconnected standard gauge rail lines in North America. It does not include most subway or light rail lines. Federal Railroad Administration regulations require passenger cars used on the national rail network to be heavy and strong enough to protect riders in case of collision with freight trains. Most mass transit vehicles do not meet this requirement. Commuter rail equipment generally does, as do all Amtrak cars. Mass transit systems that do not meet FRA requirements cannot even be connected to the national rail network, unless the connection layout only permits the transfer of one or two cars at a time, for example via a Y stub siding.
Famous quotes containing the words national, rail and/or network:
“There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)