Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

What a difference two years makes. I say that primarily because about two years ago, we visited the  Model Railroad Garden  at the Chicago Botanic Garden , and I am just now sharing my experience there with you all!  The Model Railroad Garden is an upcharge attraction when visiting the Botanic Garden, which itself used to charge only for parking, but now charges admission per adult, but nonetheless, quite worth it in my opinion, despite its relatively small size in comparison to some of the other exhibits. I first visited the Model Railroad Garden when I was about 10 or so, and it definitely connected my love of trains with the love of the outdoors and picturesque landscapes. The outdoors and manicured gardens offer a sense of realism that many railroad models just can't replicate, but that's not to say I enjoy exhibits like the Museum of Science and Industry's Great Train Story any less interesting. A Santa Fe model in action at the Garden, one of numerous 2 gauge scal...

I once read a story sent through an email chain which I've seen pop up every now and again, which asserts the fact that two horses standing side by side are roughly 5 feet apart is the reason that is the standard gauge of railroad tracks is 4'8 1/2". Created with Bing AI It isn't true , or at the very least there's far more that can be said on how standard gauge came into being. For example, the Southern Railway had a 5' gauge originally . I found this from a Trains forum posts which is one of a few of these stories to go around. I apologize in advance for the rough editing. Railroad gauge     Fascinating Stuff . . .   Railroad Tracks   The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.   That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?   Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.   Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail l...

The " Crash at Crush " was a publicity stunt organized by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad , otherwise known as the "Katy" Line, in 1896. The event was held in Texas area dubbed Crush, created specifically for the event. Ultimately, The Crash at Crush was a reckless, but nonetheless effective, marketing strategy to get people to visit Texas in the late 19th century. It involved two locomotives being deliberately crashed into each other at full speed in front of a crowd of thousands of spectators. The event was heavily promoted by the railroad as a spectacle, with tickets sold in advance and trains chartered to bring people to the event. However, the crash turned out to be a disaster, as the force of the impact was much greater than expected and several people were killed or injured in the resulting chaos. The "Crash at Crush" is considered one of the most notorious examples of dangerous and irresponsible corporate publicity stunts in American history. I ...

Bagdad, CA is another Route 66 ghost town  in San Bernardino County, CA. A product of the railroad, it would ultimately be superseded by Interstate 40, when 66 no longer functioned as a through route. However, this is not a tale of a town destroyed by a freeway or re-alignment, as this town peaked long before I-40 was built, the bypass was just another nail in the coffin. Like many nearby towns, it got its start in 1883 when the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway was built between Needles and Barstow, CA. During this time, it served as a stop for mining workers north and south of the area. Even at its peak, only a few hundred people called the town home. Towns built by the railroad usually were platted in 10 mile increments to allow steam engines to take on water, supplied by about 20 tank cars a day to replenish tanks in the area, which otherwise is completely dry being in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  The town is actually the US record holder for consecutive ...

While the history of Route 66 is extremely well documented, both by myself and other transportation historians and bloggers, its child routes don't often get the same amount of attention. Of course, none of these routes had anywhere near the impact of 66 on our culture, but I think each one has a bit of interesting discussions about them to blog about. US Route 66 had seven spur routes from 166 to 666, with two different 366's in existence at different points in history, although none of these roads' legacies came close to that of its parent, with the possible exception of the infamous Devil's Highway , which necessitated a numbering change to US-491 in 2003. While Route 66 itself has a fairly bloody and dark history that isn't as discussed as much in nostalgia, so too does a few of its spur routes. EB US-166 assurance shield. Alex Nitzman photo. The poor engineering and high speeds of US-666 were the actual catalysts of the fate of the Devil's Highway, and a...

In 1893, a footnote to the Book of the [Chicago World's] Fair stated, "The connection of the railroad systems of the world by way of Bering strait is by no means the chimerical project that some would have us believe, nor one that may not ere long be accomplished". 128 years later, such a link still has yet to come to fruition, nor will it in the near future. But that isn't to say that the idea is dead, far from it, and the project is now more technically feasible than ever, even if there would be countless environmental, economic and social issues to hammer out first.  Just five years ago, China began planning for a railway that would connect it to Russia, the United States and Canada via a 200 kilometer tunnel . Artistic rendition of the Bering Strait Railway Tunnel. From Bering Strait Tunnel Back on World Agenda! by Rachel Douglas, 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring/Summer 2007 Since a connection between North America and Asia has been in humanity'...