After an American Experience episode about streamliners aired a few days ago, I've had a renewed interest in high-speed rail in the U.S. It turns out that some of the first fast trains ran between Chicago and the Twin Cities. For the inaugural run, two identical trainsets ran on parallel tracks, carrying sets of twins (people). The corridor was considered to be the nation's testing ground for (relatively) high-speed rail, with hundreds of people traveling the route each day on trains operated by Burlington, Chicago & North Western, and The Milwaukee Road. (Although, I guess, “testing ground” might be a misnomer of sorts, since there were faster trains elsewhere.)
Today, Amtrak's Empire Builder train runs about once a day from St. Paul to Chicago at an average of about 52 mph. I guess the record average speed for the (approximate) route was made in 1967, with a train averaging about 66 mph. The train today still gets up to about 80 in some spots, but not for very long, I guess.
Every so often, there are proposals to upgrade the line for trains probably running two to three times that speed (or more). When I was probably about 12 or so, I went to a meeting in Rochester where some discussion went on about some of the options. Obviously, the Rochester folks wanted the line to go through town, although it would probably make the route longer and whatnot. I just remember being excited because there was a little discussion of using maglevs, but I think the adults knew better than I did that maglevs are damned expensive and complicated (I just wanted to see something that was really fast.)
Posted by mike at February 6, 2004 12:06 AM | Politics | TrackBack