Lived there, can confirm. Then I visited actual modern countries and they look at a distance like that and are baffled that there hasn’t been built a high speed train already. Why would you drive 10 hours when you could sleep, read, or watch TV on a train for 6 hours instead?

The Midwest is so flat, it’s basically gagging for some tracks all over it.

I imagine the main concern was if there’s enough population to use it effectively but that’s surely not an issue now.

I live in VA and the closest big city is an hour away.