Would we put a railroad over mountains today?

Perhaps a better question would be: “Why would we not put a railroad over mountains today?” Those who oppose railroads in general have a number of answers to the latter question.

The first one often cited is that the railroad is a 19th century invention that has passed its useful lifetime. Elon Musk, he of hyperloop, SpaceX, and interplanetary Tesla roadsters, has said as much. Why spend money on updating what is, at best, technology from the early 20th century, when there is a new, high-tech solution that can replace railroads completely? And it’s not an aircraft.

Basically, hyperloop is a maglev on steroids, an underground, super-high-speed transportation system that only marginally resembles a passenger train. The resemblance is that hyperloop cars are, by nature and design, lightweight tubular structures that will carry passengers in seating arrangements much like a current passenger rail car. They also are propelled by electricity, although more like a rail gun, and follow a tube that is an updated version of a track.

Hyperloop is also capable of near supersonic speeds without above-ground noise. What a hyperloop can do for passengers, it can do for freight, although it is yet to be seen if there is enough versatility of routing for that to happen.

Another oft cited reason not to pursue rail projects is because we are already heavily invested (particularly in America) in roads and air travel; and both are perceived as faster and safer, although only the faster part is true for automobile travel. And autonomous cars running on dedicated highways would only be slow-ass versions of hyperloop.

A third reason? Through mountains is much better than over them. The Swiss, paragons of experience in building things over mountains, have figured this out. Their latest rail projects generally go through them, to the extent possible.

Yet another reason is that it costs too much. 19th and early 20th century railroad projects in mountainous areas were generally either part of a larger project including much flat-land running and generous land grants in non-mountainous terrain, or they were doomed to slow failure, much like the slow failure suffered by Amtrak for forty some years. (Western Pacific and Milwaukee Road’s pacific extension are examples of the latter type, both 20th century projects subject to slow and certain financial losses.) Like many grandiose projects of our times, the earlier rail projects were also plagued by political infighting, profiteering, and cost overruns that made money for investors but not for the railroads themselves.

I’m sure there are minor, less compelling reasons not to build a railroad over the mountains, probably the least compelling being environmental. While grading and tunneling does disturb the natural configuration of the landscape, there’s something more soul satisfying, I think, about a major engineering achievement with a backdrop of spectacular nature. Think of the many, many people who would never experience the beauty of a Donner Pass or a Soldier Summit had it not been for the railroad over it.

I conclude, after this brief review of reasons not to do it, that we would, indeed, build a railroad over the mountains—be they the Rockies or the Alleghenies—if there were none already there. Even in the cynical times of the 21st century, society longs for spectacular achievements that say we are here and we are conquering nature, time, and distance to get from here to there.

Hyperloop? A thousand miles of tunnel under the Rockies may be an achievement, but it’s not spectacular. It’s boring. Another highway, even a hybridized super transportation route like those hypothesized for getting road and rail across the plains? Also boring, and getting more so with every inch of sound deadening wall, heavy-duty guardrail, and anti-suicide fence, making superhighways just an above ground tunnel. We've already tried supersonic aircraft, both costly, difficult to maintain, and--again--boring to ride.

Why did the civilization cross the mountains? To get to the other side? Maybe it was to relieve boredom.

©2018 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)