[…] they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down,

This is an MSR, all friendshippers beware.

What an ug ye've myed yorsel.

On the East and West Coast Main Lines in the 1950s/60s, for example, we saw the extinction of intermediate stations in order to create the same sort of accelerations that IRP is now promising. Back then, the priority was faster main line services, with wayside/intermediate stations paying the ultimate price.