A media tour showcases the last stages of the construction of the new high-speed railway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
“The long-looked-for moment has arrived,” exclaimed The New York Times on May 10, 1869, as its correspondent reported from Promontory, Utah, that “the construction of the Pacific Railroad is un fait accompli.”Having just witnessed the hammering of the golden spike that linked the freshly laid tracks to Utah’s east and west, the Times connected the project’s geographic dots and spelled its historic meaning: “The inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard and the dwellers on the Pacific slopes are henceforth emphatically one people.”