With news that Sen. Harry Reid has thrown his support behind the $4 billion DesertXpress high-speed train from Las Vegas to Victorville—leaving a more costly maglev line to Anaheim in the lurch—residents of Victorville are feeling mighty good about themselves.

“I was very pleased,” says Victorville Mayor Pro Tempore Mike Rothschild. “[Reid] never out of hand rejected [the express train]. I’m sure they want to get something now instead of something 10 or 15 years from now.”

Las Vegans and Angelenos may turn up their noses at Victorville, and certainly one has to wonder whether Southern Californians really want to drive an hour or more to get to Victorville, park, somehow transfer themselves onto a train, and then have to transfer to a cab to get to their hotels in Vegas. (It seems a safe bet that few Las Vegans would consider taking the train themselves.)

Nevertheless, Victorville seems comfortable drinking from the same well of boundless optimism that sustains Sin City. “This is the hidden Goliath for the high desert region,” says Rothschild. “Our citizens are excited about it. I don’t know of anybody skeptical.”