It took more than 30 years to bring 110 mph passenger train service from Chicago to St. Louis. It could take that or longer to get true high-speed rail along the same corridor.

You should not expect any big transformational project to be straightforward. That's a takeaway from Part 2 of our series "Hard Things" about the heavy lifts and big dream efforts our society and community achieve.

How does society do hard things? In this first part of our new series "Hard Things," WGLT unpacks the generational project that brought faster passenger train service to Illinois.