> There's also very little expertise in the rail industry in America due to underinvestment in recent decades.

we could solve this by importing entire crews from Europe or Asia, but knuckledraggers insist on cREaTinG lOCal UNioN jOBs

I don't believe that anyway. The USA has a very robust rail network, it's just all dedicated to freight. Building and maintaining railroads is not some forgotten capability; it's very high tech with robots/automation doing a lot of the work now.