Railways are back in fashion. Globally, the industry has been booming, thanks less to high oil prices than to a growing emphasis on the environmental benefits of trains over planes. The UK now has its first high-speed railway line (a few decades after everyone else), Barack Obama is promising similar links in the US, Japanese-built bullet trains are making a splash in Taiwan, and the French seem never to have lost their love of fast trains. Then, of course, there are the rather slower trains operated by the state-owned Indian Railways, the world's largest commercial employer, with 1.4 million staff.
鐵路再度受到追捧。在全球范圍內，鐵路行業一直蓬勃發展。主要原因并非高油價，而是因為人們日益注重火車對環境的影響小于飛機這一因素。英國如今建成了第一條高速鐵路（比其它國家晚了幾十年），巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)承諾美國也要建高鐵，日本造的子彈頭列車在臺灣引起轟動，而法國似乎從未失去對快速列車的喜愛。當然，也有像印度國有鐵路公司(Indian Railways)運營的那種速度較慢的列車，該公司是世界上最龐大的商業公司，雇員多達140萬人。