Imagine boarding a bullet train in China, zipping across eastern ­Siberia, and then completing a 13,000km high-speed journey two days later in Alaska via an undersea tunnel below the Bering Strait. I, for one, would be first in line at the ticket office to experience this fantasy train ride first mooted by the Chinese back in 2014. For the time being, however, the project has hit the proverbial ­buffers of a breathtaking £146 billion price tag. 

Of course, one should never say never. After all, Le Chunnel was proposed way back in 1802 by the French engineer Albert Mathieu-Flavier yet only saw the light of day, or should I say darkness, when finally opening in 1994. And Antoni Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia is still under construction 139 years after it began. Its latest date for completion is 2026. Yet from a new Alaskan harbour proposed to be excavated by atomic explosions to a zeppelin docking station atop a landmark American skyscraper, the history of travel is littered with projects that were never meant to be. 

Here are 10 such examples combining lunacy with farfetchedness that never made it off the drawing board or simply ran out of cash.

Dubai’s world of frivolity

Moneybags Dubai could fill this list alone with bonkers ideas lifted from Peter Pan’s manual of largesse. International Chess City was unable to even get past a pawn to e.4 opening while the underwater Discus Hotel remains submerged by financial difficulties. But these failures are small fry compared with Dubai’s World Islands project. Its loadsamoney ambition was to create a global map of artificial islands bedecked by cringeworthily tasteless luxurious homes. Sadly, the world stopped spinning on its axis when the dirham dried up during 2008’s financial crisis. That said, several of the 300 themed islands did actually come to pass, noticeably Lebanon, and construction struggles on to this day.