True, I was thinking more of the other book, where there was a distance limitation to the wormholes, and you'd have to go through few stations to get to really distant planets.

But anyway, trains work well for shorter distances, are the first step on the tech ladder, and don't tie up channelers. And I just don't think permanent gateways are a possibility, not without some kind of ter'angreal. We'd have seen them set up between Egwene and Elayne, or the Rebel Aes Sedai Camp and the Borderlands, or Rand would start using them after learning from LTT, if nothing else.