In honor of Japan's decision to build a $100 billion maglev train from Tokyo to Osaka, the Infrastructurist blog has put together a list of ambitious train projects that were never completed. Or, in some cases, never even begun.
It's not meant as a knock against the Japanese maglev, which will (in approximately 34 years) carry passengers 320 miles in a mere 67 minutes. Instead, this is more about the way imagining what could be reminds us of what might have been. Some of the things on the list are relatively practical—like Germany's "Rail Zeppelin." Other projects are a little more, shall we say, fanciful. Like the image above, which depicts a proposed network of rail lines leading directly to St. Paul, Minnesota, from such exotic locals as London and, um, the North Pole.
