Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomguy34
Please let the sale fail so that Amtrak can get a lease to run trains between Cincinnati and Chattanooga
|
...and don't forget that downtown Chattanooga sits about 5 miles from the Georgia border, and there have been plans since the 1990s to build high speed passenger rail between it and Atlanta.
For context, here is a map of the railroad soon after its completion:
What's interesting about the strategy back in the 1860s and 70s is that they choose to build directly between Lexington, KY and Chattanooga, through the rough topography of the heavily forested Cumberland Plateau. The alternative was to build a shorter railroad from Lexington to the completed railroads in Knoxville, through similarly difficult terrain, but that would have added significant overall distance to reach southern farmland and a port on the Gulf of Mexico.
FFWD to the 1960s, and I-75 was built between Lexington and Knoxville,
not Lexington and Chattanooga. Incredibly, modern machinery made it possible to deflect to Knoxville with a distance penalty of just 15 additional miles. If you are familiar with I-75 in Kentucky, it blasts straight through the rolling terrain. Obviously, the climb up Jellico Mountain is a big, old-fashioned climb, but aside from that, the expressway is pretty tame.
For the Cincinnati Southern RR to serve as a modern passenger line connecting Ohio and Atlanta, they'd need to build a new passenger railroad bypass in the windiest 20~ mile stretch south of Danville, KY. This would avoid conflicts with freight trains and enable passenger trains to maintain a much higher speed than what's possible on the hilliest part of the line.