In 10 to 15 years we could have a high-speed railroad come through our little valley. By that time, the trains they are planning to use will be of technology developed as early as the first streamliner trains in the 1930s. Designs that will be approaching 100 years old and still on steel wheels making lots of noise and generally being a major problem.

This California High-Speed Railroad isn’t anything new or innovative. And we are being told it is the future of land transportation.

This week we got word of three possible alignments through or around our little valley. All of them are just plain awful. While the new routes might keep the tracks out of all but a little edge of the city of Santa Clarita, they would still, for the most part, run through Acton and Agua Dulce, little impeded by the people who are in the path of those rails.

What the folks at the California High-Speed Rail Authority don’t get is that we don’t want the currently planned system at all in any form. You see, we are learning just how old-fashioned it is.

Sure, they can paint the train a bright color and make it sleek and polished-looking. They can even make it look like it is going 220 mph when it is standing still.

What they can show is that it is really just a train of a type that was running in Japan and France almost 60 years ago. Yes, you read that correctly. Sixty years ago.

If we’re going to have high-speed trains, let’s make them the most technologically advanced trains the world has ever seen. There are concepts floating around that boggle the mind, and they are not just on the pages of magazines like Popular Science or Popular Mechanics.

Really. Why not maglev systems that run on a single raised track with a small footprint? Such a system could achieve higher speeds and be more efficient. It would also be quieter and wouldn’t require extensive tunneling. Going over the mountains could be done at the grade level of our existing highways.

There is also a system being contemplated elsewhere that would operate at speeds exceeding 600 mph. It would be like those vacuum-tube and cylinder systems you used to see in large office buildings. Roll up the paper and put it in the cylinder, then put the cylinder in the tube, and it is sucked along the tube to the destination. Remember those tubes? For a long time, you could see them at drive-up tellers at many banks.

These are just two of the systems. There are many more being contemplated and studied. In the meantime, we are, as a state called California, going to build a systems of rails that are 4 feet, 8½ inches apart, just like those that have been built since some of the first railroads in the world.

By the way, the width between rails is called the “gauge” and is based on the width of the wagon wheels in Roman times. Talk about an old design concept.

Do we want to spend all this money on a railroad that is essentially at the last stage of development of an old design? Here, in what may be the most technologically advanced state in all 50, we are going to build a system that reflects old design and not the latest possible leap in technology that is possible. We could end up with a railroad nearly obsolete by the time it starts to run trains over those old-style tracks.

So once again the great and mystical members of the CHSR Authority are going to hold a meeting to hear discussions about the proposed new alignment studies. The meeting is on April 12 of this year. Since much of what they will be talking about concerns the alignments (routes) of the tracks through our part of Los Angeles County, the meeting will be held in Orange County at the Anaheim Convention Center. I guess they want to make it really convenient for us to attend.

You know, I don’t even know if we’re invited, but as citizens I think we should attend anyway. Sorry, lighted torches and pitchforks cannot be used, but our voices can be, and we should be loud. Very loud.

And after the meeting, we can send a bill to them for the gasoline and parking costs when they could have held it right here in Santa Clarita. COC has some excellent places for a meeting. How about the football field? I’d love to see it filled to capacity with those of us who want to stop the train.

Let me know. I’m ready when you are.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com. His older commentaries are archived at DManzer.com; his newer commentaries can be accessed [here]. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].