Americans will literally do anything except build trains
now that we have this river across the whole country, we can finally introduce swimming cars!
or normal cars in bubble wrap… see we’re already brainstorming like it’s a Tesla project
You can create this strait and then have a train which runs along it, like the train from Spirited Away
They’re nowhere near the top if you relate it to size though (and also next to none of it is electrified, which is a pretty good indicator of it being mostly old - after all, rail is what even allowrd the country to be built).
But also it’s a joke
I object to electrification being used to judge a country’s railway age and quality. A lot of countries transition into electric trains over a century ago especially in Europe and surprisingly the US. I could talk for hours about the US’s history with electric trains and how short sided business practices combined with the government’s attempt to sorta nationalize the rail industry crippled it’s electrification progress. Not to get too far off topic though there’s only three metrics you can really grade the quality and age of a nation’s rail infrastructure with. That is size, volume, and average speed. In my opinion though avarage speed is the best indicator for a country’s railway age and quality because it gets rid of a lot of the problems other definitions bring up. For example both of the internationally recognized definitions for high speed rail uses a different speed depending if the line was new (155mph) or upgraded (125mph). This causes all sorts of issues because under those definitions Amtrak’s northeast regional train counts as high speed rail as it runs on an upgraded line with a top speed of 125mph even though the northeast corridor has an average speed of 86mph.
Well, the Panama Canal is exactly that, built mostly that way.
Because it was built at the thinnest part of the content and used existing lakes?
Pretty sure Omaha would have loved an East\West canal across the continent.
If they could do it in ancient Greece then Americans can do it today for sure!
Stolen from !topview@lemmy.world
Also: although planned over 2000 years ago, it wasn’t really made by ancient Greeks. They gave up and made a road to transport ships on it instead of actually digging. Only in modern time did they actually finish the canal
Wait… They had a movable pool that they rode the ships into and then horses dragged to the other waterway? That sounds awesome
They more or less put wheels on ships or rather loaded them on trailers and simply dragged them over land. Funny thing is that Thucydides (460 BC–395 BC) wrote about this, and described it as an ancient practice!
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/diolkos-ancient-trackway-that-carried.html?m=1
Better even. They made the movable pool quite long. So while the horses dragged the pool the ships could still sail in it. That way the horses didn’t need to drag the pool the whole way!
I dont think so. Not in this case at least. They gave up digging in the hard rock and instead made a limestone road to drive them on dry surface.
This is the Corinth canal but before it was made the paved road for transporting ships was called Diolkos
I love the 1950s, the solution to any problem was just “idk, have you tried nuking it?”
About 36 feet above sea level though. How are we gonna clear a waterway from coast to coast, though? C’mon, boffins, let’s sort this out!
