Section 8, Detail h3r3h4
The Ketchup-Bottle Water Tower
A water tower in the shape of a giant ketchup (also called “catsup”) bottle rises over the highway near Collinsville, Illinois.
The “bottle” is seventy feet tall, perched on one-hundred-foot steel legs. If it really were a ketchup bottle, it could hold one hundred thousand gallons of sauce!
Built in 1949 to advertise the Brooks Catsup Company, the giant tower has become a favorite sight for visitors to Collinsville, and many others on their way west to St. Louis, Missouri.
Both of these landmarks are near stations for track 12 of the kogelbaan. You can roll from Bedford to Collinsville in about an hour.
It’s really important to study the kogelbaan map, however. If you don’t get off at Collinsville, the next station is Cawker City, Kansas. These two cities are only about five hundred miles apart by car. But if you’re making the trip using track 12 of the kogelbaan, the twisting, turning trail between these two stops is more than twenty-two thousand miles long! You’ll be inside a ball for over a week!
Many super-secret travel networks can be used for speedy travel around the world, but this is definitely not one of them. If you don’t get off the kogelbaan at the right stop, you could be in for a very long ride.
Unlike the magtrain, or the slidewalk, it’s clear that the people who designed and built the kogelbaan didn’t really spend a lot of time communicating and coordinating with each other. They didn’t cooperate or work well together at all.
So if you’re in a hurry to travel across the U.S., you’re much better off driving, biking, taking a bus, or even using some form of novelty motorized, wheeled transportation to get where you want to go.