Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by _delirium on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @09:02PM
(#8727265)
The U.S. has been occasionally interested in connecting Alaska to the Canadian rail system, independent of any Russian crossing. But Canada seems less interested. Not sure whether the U.S. is really seriously interested in it, or whether it's just pandering to Alaskan politicians. But there have been some attempts to get Canada on board with the possibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Railroad#Proposed_conne...
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Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by ghaff on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @09:31PM
(#8727360)
I strongly suspect it's serious fantasy-land stuff. The existing Alaska railroad network is essentially a Seward-Anchorage-Fairbanks line. (We won't count the narrow gauge from Whitehorse.) Anchorage has the only sizable population along that line--300K people live there. So to connect to the Canadian railroad system you'd build about 1,000 miles of track. There are apparently some resource extraction reasons to build such a link but my impression is that it's mostly Alaskan politicians who are interested.