One interesting thing about the Swiss system is they've prioritized reliable connectivity and frequent service over high-speed service. They do have some higher speed rail, but nothing even as fast as their neighbors in France or Germany. I feel like we have a thing for high speed rail here in the US as an aspirational goal, but maybe we should be aiming for reliable regional connectivity as a first step. Austin to San Antonio, Dallas to OKC, an electrified/more frequent SF to Sacramento - all of that could make a huge dent in local travel patterns.
Switzerland is also very small, as countries go. The longest train route is IC 1 (St. Gallen <-> Geneva) going from the (almost) easternmost point to the westernmost point, and it’s 4 hours (it does have a few higher speed sections close to Bern). They simply don’t need much speed if they run frequent and reliable trains.
And the Swiss railways operate high-speed trains for those links with neighbouring countries- their routes to Milan, Venice and Frankfurt use trains capable of 250 km/h (ETR610 or Giruno), though they only travel at 200 km/h within Switzerland.
TBH considering their mountainous terrain, already the lower speeds they achieve are quite a feat of engineering. Meanwhile a small storm upends most of Germany's rail network for a long time because they let trees grow close to the rails...
I am now imagining some description of brush extensions on the front of cow catchers that just take a wire brush and scrub the fire out of the track in front of the train to get leaves off the track and scrub of some of the crushed wet leaves off of it as the train goes along.
I hope that the Swiss will stay level-headed and not get into high-speed trains. Reliable connections are far better for more people. The opposite example I would like to present is the high-speed Berlin-Munich train line. It has gobbled up a lot of the railway budget. According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Munich_high-spe...] this was the most expensive transportation project in Germany. In my opinion it would have been better to bring the rest of the infrastructure up to a higher standard.
