[futurix]

Your description of European trains is rather pessimistic and negative.

UK train network is not perfect, but generally is in a decent state of repair. It does receive large amount of investment regularly (less so under Conservatives but still a significant amount) - and main disruptions of the recent years were caused by either railway worker strikes fighting for their rights or changes to timetables that were too ambitious (because of the amount of new services added to the network).

Yes, the maintenance closures are annoying - but no piece of infrastructure can avoid periodical maintenance. You usually get 6 months' notice and in most cases a diversionary route. In fact even then you could get to Leeds from London via the West Coast mainline and then Transpennine routes. And it certainly didn't affect all travel to the north - depending on how you count them, London has 3 to 5 separate rail routes to there.

The assumption that delays, cancellations, and odd rules are particular to only railways is frankly bizarre. And so is your statement that train travel is considered a second-rate service here - it is all of course highly anecdotal, but on routes that are competitive with local flights (and longer distance routes with high speed trains) - trains are usually considered to be the better option (although that might have something to do with the never-ending cost saving drive by the airlines).

Your particular example of travel from Brussels to Lyon is also incorrect now, as French railways recently introduced direct high-speed services avoiding Paris (and building even more tracks for that). Crossing Paris old-style involves a Metropolitain trip, but that is not an unusual problem for most places (Boston's infamous North-South railway gap comes to mind).

I have experience with Amtrak, UK, French, and German railways - and I don't think I ever saw Amtrak tickets cheaper - unless you are comparing them to some last-minute train tickets on over-subscribed services in Europe. In fact I was under a distinct impression of Amtrak being noticeably pricier.

And finally, railway redundancy in US is typically way worse - Amtrak doesn't own most of the tracks it runs on and is treated as a second class citizen there. And any contingency route is likely to be untested and not ready for use due to cost-cutting. And apart from North East Corridor most of Amtrak routes are double track only, shared with freight.