Comment by hackermatic

My perception of the history of long-distance American railroads (not ones that were built for a specific task like connecting a mine to a market) is that many of them -- maybe even most of them -- were failures in their first iteration. After going bankrupt and ruining a lot of investors, others bought the assets at fire-sale prices, and the opportunity to avoid the massive capital outlay of actually building the lines is what made them profitable in the long run.