In North America, conversely, railroads continue making money mainly through freight haulage whereas long distance passenger services are slow and neglected; the survival of the 30-year-old Amtrak system seems periodically questioned.

North America's sprawling metropolitan areas, it is true, couldn't function without subways and commuter railroads. Yet, for instance, New York has not managed so far, after decades of debates and projects, to create an efficient rail link between Manhattan and John F. Kennedy Airport, one of the world's premier gateways.

In Europe the ultra fast trains, pioneered by the French trains 'a grande vitesse' (TGV), are revolutionizing travel patterns. Meanwhile, a new generation of levitation trains, which float above the roadbed, is being developed in Germany and other countries. High-speed trains are being integrated into air traffic so as to relieve airport congestion on the ground and aloft.

A projected 200-m.p.h. rail connection between downtown Cologne and Frankfurt Airport will deliver passengers to overseas flights in 50 minutes whereas it takes now at least 55 minutes to get them by air from Cologne to Frankfurt or vice versa. Similarly, Air France plans to take passengers from Brussels to Charles de Gaulle Airport by extra-quick train instead of flying them there. Some Eurostar trains between Paris and London through the Eurotunnel may soon be routed to Heathrow Airport.

The emerging network of feeder trains, sharing codes with flights, enables passengers to complete check-in at the railroad station, to start their trip with a boarding pass and with carry-on luggage only, and at the airport to proceed at once to their departure gate.

High-speed trains need relatively flat terrain. The railway builders of the nineteenth century already pierced mountains to avoid graded sections of the tracks that required multi-axle steam locomotives to pull and push trains; some of those behemoths can still be seen in transportation museums. Now there is a new era of tunneling.

Switzerland already has started work on a railroad tunnel designed to connect Zurich with Milan by train in two hours and forty minutes, cutting present travel time by nearly one half. The new tunnel will be 36 miles long, as compared with the nine-mile St. Gotthard Tunnel, the venerable mountain portal built in 1882. (By comparison, the six year-old Eurotunnel under the English Channel is 31 miles long.)

At least three more long railroad tunnels under various chains of the Alps are under discussion or in advanced planning, including a 34-mile connection below the Brenner Pass on the Italian-Austrian frontier, to speed up travel time and cope with increasing traffic between Munich and Northern Italy. Ecologists hope that the new north-south rail links will absorb at least some of the roaring invasion of trucks on the mountain roads that is harming the Alpine environment.

The development plans of the People's Republic of China include high-speed trains between Shanghai and Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and, some time in the future, between Shanghai and Beijing, more than 800 miles to the north.

Another Chinese railroad project is clearly political: It would link the city of Golmud in Qinghai Province in northwest central China with Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, 700 miles distant. The spur would have to traverse mountain ranges soaring to above 15,000 feet. Construction and operation of such a railroad would pose enormous technical and financial problems. Mao Ze-dong already favored the idea of such a project to tighten Beijing's grip on the "autonomous region" of Tibet; China's present rulers appear to consider it not only desirable but also feasible.