Can you expound on this?
You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_co... has a list.
Also, the original post wrote:
> the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy.
My reply was specific to that. Saying: The original post says little because _no_ highly industrialised nation could build a freight network from scratch given current land and noise constraints.
Not as far as I know.
However, if you can build any rail at all, you can build freight rail, too.
It's mostly in the US that freight rail is noisier than passenger rail. As explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023890
If you are building new freight rail in your country, you can avoid problems (1) and (2) from that comment. Freight rail doesn't take more land than other rail (if anything, it has lower requirements, because lower speeds mean tighter curves are possible). And freight rail doesn't have to be noisier than passenger rail.
And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines.
The US already has an extensive freight rail network. It's the one part of their rail transport that works fairly well. Expanding that should be possible.
Especially because freight typically travels slower than passengers, so your track doesn't need to be as straight, so you have more leeway in planning.