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Cake day: September 7th, 2023

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  • Light rail is just that: it’s still trains, but they are orders of magnitude lighter, since all you are moving are people. After some quick Googling, freight trains can be a mile long and weigh 20,000 tons, while a light rail train may only consist of 5 cars, totalling somewhere around 200 tons. The track you need to support freight trains is very much overkill for public transit.

    Now there are heavier public transit trains that are designed to run on existing freight rail lines, but when people talk about trains for public transit, it’s usually light rail that they are thinking of. Unless they are talking about high speed trains, which also require their own dedicated tracks.