High Speed Rail Goes to Ghost Town

Get ready to catch a fast train to Borden.

What's that? You weren't planning to visit this abandoned gold rush town, where the main highlight is a tiny cemetery for railroad workers? Well, that doesn't matter: it's the site of initial construction on California's new network of high speed rail.

The $5.5 initial phase of the project will connect a suburb to empty space. The reason is a federal request to concentrate on economically depressed areas like the Central Valley. The work is expected to create as many as hundreds of thousands of jobs.

When it's done, the rail will connect San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, and a variety of other cities. It'll take the place of freeways for many commuters as the price of a gallon of gas climbs into the double-digits over the next decade.

But for now, everyone's scratching their heads over the initial location. Farmers are opposed to the rail, saying that it'll take away valuable farmland. And some small towns worry that the high-speed trains could be disruptive to their sleepy hamlets.