Big Train Coming

Suppose you had half a trillion bucks burning a hole in your pocket, didn't feel like starting a stupid war, and were looking for a really good investment opportunity. How about building a high speed global railway? Fuel prices keep driving up the cost of flying, and that's just going to get worse.

With the aid of a tunnel under the Bering strait one could reach every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and you could get pretty close to Australia. Of course, even at 200 miles an hour it's a long way from Seattle to Beijing, but think of the comfort factor, and freight could move a lot faster than by ship.

If you build on that scale, it might be sensible to increase the form factor for the railway cars, scaling each dimension up by a factor or two or so. Oil and gas pipelines, as well as superconducting electrical power lines could use the same right of way. Add a few branch lines and everywhere would be close to everywhere else.

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