>>1789716You could do that.
The key problem is that freight isn't local, its regional and cross-country.
Same is true over overnight travel for passengers, as 8-9 in the evening to 6-8 in the morning is a lot of kilometers covered even at just 80km/h.
So to compete you have 2 options:
1. Build tracks from a port/mine to a distribution center, to avoid all the problems of congestion causes to land prices and infrastructure
2. Build regional tracks that quickly cover +900km and crosses several urban settlements outskirts, while trying to deal with red tape and negotiations that didn't exist in the late 1800s.
Both of these are still doable, and still get done. But the later is so expensive that its rarely done outside of government regional projects.
