The issue is you need to grind the tracks multiple times a year on busy routes, along with ballast tamping or replacement. That’s set by total gross tonnage not by a set time span, and these maintenance items are not optional. Tamping prevents pumping and rail fatigue which can be catastrophic if you allow it to degrade and suddenly fail. Rail grinding removes microcracks created by fatigue due to every wheel passing over it. Grinding deletes the cracks, but if you leave it for too long the cracks grow and can total the rail. 10 minutes per panel is a long time when you need to maintain tens of thousands of kms of track.

Even a short distance between two towns is a maintenance headache. It could take weeks to remove the panels entirely and that’s before you get started doing maintenance at all… All you’ve accomplished is removing a maintenance obstacle you put there in the first place. Then you have to put it all back when you’re done…

A railroad typically spends 1-3% of the entire cost to build a km of track just to maintain it every year. That’s a big operating cost that eats into rail budgets already (part of why I believe they should all be nationalized to better align public incentives with a natural monopoly but that’s beyond this conversation.)

For reference, most rail costs around $1-3 million per km to build, $5-10 million or more within urban areas due to land acquisition. Typical railroad maintenance is somewhere around $10 000-$30 000 per km per year with unrestricted access. 20 mins round trip per panel (probably half an hour with deadtime between panels moving tools and gear) that’s a massive amount of increasedl about costs and service interruption.