Ships Aboard Trains

THE “POSTFIX” FOR SPRING 2003 describes a neverbuilt concept for a railroad that would have hauled ships across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Mexico, as an alternative to a Panama Canal (“The Most Gigantic Railroad,” by Joseph E. Vollmar, Jr.). Some ideas never die. The Mexican government is now floating a scheme, at the urging of President Vicente Fox, to create a sort of railroad of heavy trucks that would haul yachts across Baja California between the Sea of Cortés and the Pacific Ocean. The idea is to encourage American yacht owners to bring themselves and their money to the Sea of Cortés (and a new string of marinas) without having to make the long trip round Cabo San Lucas—just as James Buchanan Eads thought that his ship-hauling railroad could avoid the long and dangerous trip around Cape Horn.