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:
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
“In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.”
—William Congreve (1670–1729)
“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)