>>1874821It would be a solveable problem, but like I said, the disabled diesels are the smallest part of it.
A decent number of locos would likely still be operable. It’s the signalling/track control that would be the biggest problem. What I would imagine would happen is that railroads would gather their working engines to their major hubs and run supertrains between them. Length limits would be drastically increased if not abolished as it would be safer and more efficient in this case to run a few long trains over many shorter ones. The same could be said for working hours and conditions, it’s going to suck to be a railroader during this.
GE would probably also get thrown into crunch mode to get new locos and replacement parts out and working. I think we could possibly even see the brief return of B-units just in the haste to get running motors on the tracks.
Another problem would be that there likely won’t be enough working trucks for a while to both drop off and pick up goods for a while, which will just compound the supply problem for everybody who doesn’t have a direct rail connection.
Overall, I think rail would be back to normal in a few years, but in the meantime anywhere that isn’t a rail hub is going to be SOL.
