Old railway right-of-ways are routinely converted to bicycle and pedestrian trails as traditional railroad companies have abandoned them over the last fifty years. Interestingly enough, an old railway might be the ideal place to instal a magnetic space launch facility, especially if the last few miles includes an uphill grade facing East.
If you had three sets of rails, one in the center and two to either side, you could build a maglauncher in modular sections, using a rail-mobile crane to add sections as they're built. As soon as you have enough sections installed, you could begin launching G-hardened payloads at high-G acceleration. You then stop operations for an hour or so as you add each new section. As more sections are added, you can start launching "softer" payloads, until you get a long-enough launcher to put biological organisms and delicate instruments into space.
This arrangement becomes even more useful if it can be built in the Mojave Desert States, where solar power is plentiful and can be used all along the maglauncher to make it non-dependent on the existing power grid.
The first country to fully develop such technologies will dominate space, giving it an incredible advantage in expanding into the rest of the solar system for mining and agricultural operations.
Dream Big,
Dan
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