reading a lot of the comments it seems the new owners just have to use what they have to stave off closure while moving freight to pay costs and increase business, then when money is available refurb.

What's unsafe? The driver had his bright yellow safety shirt on, honked at every road crossing for the nonexistent cars in this mostly rural area, and went slow enough to shudder to a dead stop within a couple of feet if he had derailed. Now, if he were flying through at 60 mph/ 100 kph would be a different story. Pitiful maintenance but no passengers to worry about except maybe a couple bums hitching a ride.

Unsafe is when an enginedriver gets killed or when other people around the track get wounded or killed and the railwaycompany finds itself in a courtcase they cannot win.
When a tankcar with poisonous chemicals derails because of bad track thereby killing people overhere that would cause you very serious trouble.
Overhere there have been debates about moving chemicals by rail through urban areas,only tolerated because movement by road is much more unsafe.
Only this morning a small railway operator was banned from Dutch tracks because of alleged unsafe working practices.
Every railwayincident,including the minor ones,is put up for official investigation in The Netherlands and people will be kept accountable for any possible neglect.
Had a case of derailment of a NS Intercity train at Hilversum caused by bad maintenance of a switch,our national operator NS/Prorail being kept responsible for that lack of attention,luckily no people were killed in the incident.
What are you going to tell the judge,that you wore a yellow safety shirt driving on track not worth the name?
The people in the management of the company holding on to the very poor track are totally irresponsible!

Edited by user 12 April 2017 14:40:44(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified