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Canada's 100-Foot Freight Railway To Nowhere

Half as Interesting · 1.9M views · 2021-11-11 · 5:25

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Overview

A short, sarcastic Half as Interesting video about a tiny freight railway in Canada built to exploit a shipping regulation loophole. It explains how a track just 100 feet long counted as a railway.

On Hacker News

HN recommends the channel for short, wry videos on obscure topics, and this one is cited as an example of gaming rules via a loophole.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2023

Topics

Business & economics (other)Ships, submarines & maritimeTransit, cities & urban planning
Search by tags
railway to nowhereregulatory loopholeshippingcanada

What people said

AntonyGarand · 2023-05 · Recommendation

I liked this short video from "Half as interesting" on Youtube on the railway itself if you're looking for a video on the subject. [0] [VIDEO]

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krallja · 2022-02 · Recommendation

There was a video earlier this month on Half As Interesting about this railway: [VIDEO] HAI makes interesting, short, sarcastic videos about obscure topics that HNers will probably enjoy.

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bombcar · 2022-12 · Reference

It'll be interesting to see how it's gamed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try - you will get things like this: [VIDEO] but they can be corrected for later. One solution would be to switch the tax to a tariff on goods that can be avoided if you prove reduced carbon travel. So if your goods are from China, you get the 100% whatever it is, but if you can show that they travelled from China on whatever is considered acceptable, it drops to 20% or 0% or similar.

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Sources

Video by Half as Interesting, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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