<Snipped quote by KnightShade>
EDIT: Yeah I forgot how terrible the British railway system is. Here in 'merica it's fucking stellar. Probably because we built them out of a true sense of Manifest Destiny, and you horrible heathens didn't have God's approval to destroy everything in your path in the name of religion!
Well there's that, and the fact that the value of upgrading them is still pretty low for us. Even with our shitty trains you can still easily travel anywhere in the country within 12 hours max. Hell, my train from London to Edinburgh is only 4.5-5.5 hours usually. So there's little motivation to upgrade (depressing considering we invented trains in the first place...) But obviously in the US the story is somewhat different and better tech is required.