[dragontamer]

> Living in Europe and traveling by train for 7/8 hours every two months for work. What kind of shitty train does only 50mph?

There are legs of the train that go above 100mph. But all-in-all, once freight traffic and other issues are considered, you're averaging no better than 50mph on US trains.

As a sibling-comment says: US freight gets priority in our country. The US doesn't really have a passenger rail system, we have a freight rail system that happens to sometimes have passenger rail as a 2nd citizen.