| Would YOU ride a train from Istanbul to El Paso? Posted by grahame at 08:29, 9th August 2026 |     |
From my timeline
Saw this one and thought of you immediately. Two questions
1 - Would you ride this line?
2 - What's the biggest challenge facing building something like this today? I'm open to both geopolitical challenges and/or technology challenges.
Interesting questions. New railways covering extreme places are not unheard of -
The Ghan from Adelaide all the way through to Darwin, final section opened on Febraury 1st 2004.
The high-altitude Qinghai–Tibet railway, also known as the Sky Train, runs from the city of Xining in Qinghai Province to Lhasa, Tibet, and takes around 20 hours, final section opened 1st July 2006.
Rail Baltica is an under-construction rail infrastructure project that is intended to integrate the Baltic states in the European rail network (Tallinn to Warsaw)
In 20 years, I have not ridden / been tempted to go as a tourist on the Sky Train or The Ghan (nor have I looked seriously at heading from St Petersburg to Vladivistok or Bejing, nor the Indian Pacific nor the Californian Zephr, Empire Builder or The Canadian). So unlikely to look to be an early rider on "rail acrose the roof of the world"
With a political will, and that would be a very changed world indeed from today, I would not rule it out. But it would need that political will, and depending on the strength of that will a business case as to who would be paying for / supporting its services. Technology across the Bering straight could, I'm sure, be solved though at a price and you might end up with a ferry - as per Van to Tatvan, Tallinn to Helsinki, or even Villa San Giovanni to Messina though that latter is proposed for a fixed link as has happened with the English Channel.
Personally, I suspect my lack of enthusiasm to try out these ultra-long routes is my lack of wanting to be in the same train all that time - curious because I have been quite happy up to 11 days without port calls on a cruise liner. And, yes, I know that passenger trains on The Ghan, for example, stop for tourist breaks and are rather like a land cruise. Give me - I suppose - something that's slightly more like and less alien from my home-travel; I probabaly would / will travel on Rail Baltica if still around, and indeed I have already travelled from Warsaw to Tallinn on the local trains through each of the countries, and been back with Lisa too.
| Re: Would YOU ride a train from Istanbul to El Paso? Posted by Oxonhutch at 11:57, 9th August 2026 | |
Have done Khabarovsk - Vladivostok on an overnight train. Interesting journey. Russian level crossing protection is brutal - a ramped sector plates that rise out of the roadway and presents its blunt edge to oncoming road traffic.
