St. Paul's train to nowhere

Posted at 4:03 PM on June 29, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

There's been a fair amount of chortling over plans for high-speed rail in the country, and in these parts there's been plenty of hand-wringing over a St. Paul-to-Chicago leg. Should it go through Red Wing or down through Rochester?

We didn't have these nagging problems when we dreamed bigger dreams.

The Infrastructurist notes today that there was once a plan for train service from St. Paul to London...

The most striking line from this system -- which is really saying something for a system that includes a track to the North Pole -- is a double-tracked bridge that extends across the Atlantic Ocean and runs, via an incredibly straight course, into London. Behold the St. Paul & London Intercontinental Doubletrack Railway:

(h/t: Boing Boing)

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Comments (4)

I once had a very brief relationship with a young woman who asked me if I went by train from St.Paul when I traveled to Europe.

Posted by Jim Shapiro | June 29, 2011 4:16 PM

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I'll bet MPR brought a lawsuit against this train, too, the haters...(g)

Posted by Bob Moffitt | June 29, 2011 4:44 PM

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There are still many that believe St Paul is the center of everything!

Posted by Larry | June 29, 2011 5:53 PM

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Very fanciful. Would be nice to be able to read the captions better, but it looks like the map is satirical. The California lines to San Francisco and Sacramento head to Mexico and the North Pole Railway appears to continue on to Luna, the moon.

This post by MPR's Dan Olson suggests the map was created by 1871-era Tea Partier types. At least they looked to the future.

Posted by Charlie Quimby | June 29, 2011 10:32 PM

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