Railway campaign

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by rcaf_777

Please expand this

Well the war starts in the mid 1990's so the majority of manpower and materials would be going towards that rather then improving civilian infrastructure as it did IRL. Some work may have commenced, but quickly halted as the war kicks in.
We can see from the timelines (all three canon versions) the war was in full swing very quickly too - very little build up time. The only units left in the US were a few assigned to civil defence plus a handful waiting for shipping to come available to take them to Europe, the Middle East, or Korea.
We also know that the first nukes to hit the US were in November 1997 which absolutely would have halted any further work which may have been slowly proceeding.

Re the walking dead, in that you haven't had nuclear war tearing the place up. Most infrastructure is still in one piece (mostly) and, provided the manpower and skills are available, generally repairable. Zombies don't tend to rip up rail lines, destroy entire cities, and commit acts of sabotage...