Alan:

Now here's a thought - I wonder if intermodal shipping containers could be retrofitted to carry passengers? This could be a way to ramp up passenger capacity quickly, and to integrate freight and passenger traffic.

Not ideal, by any means. But it reminds me a little bit of the Cuban contraptions pulled by a semi - whatever works.

FRA would have a seizure ! *SO* far from current regs, etc.

A few years after TSHTF, who knows ?

Alan