Yes, I knew it could invariably sway into “Orient Express” territory, part of why I didn’t pursue any one route today. Felt I would just end up doing a particularly conventional murder mystery in which a permanent resident must team up with a traveller to do it.

But I have to admit, I like the “destruction of something in the way” line. Yet with my logical hat on, I’m inclined to think destruction of something such as a planet might actually impede a train line, if my loosely-understood movie science of basically stringing together orbits in a looped path is correct.

So it might not so much be destruction but rather transformation. Perhaps the forced collapse of our own Sun, thus rendering life on Earth impossible, which would set up a small, super dense white dwarf (I think?) that could give us the necessary orbital sling to access the rest of the galaxy.