Talgo II photo album on LIFE
Just by chance, I found this photo album poking around LIFE Google-based search engine for photos.
I suppose it refers to first Talgo II train set produced in the U.S. in 1949 by the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF) under the direction of Spanish engineers.
Photos were taken by Al Fenn.
For those who like to have a piece of story hung up their walls, there’s the possibility to order a printed and framed version of the chosen photo directly from the web (starting from $89.99).
Of course, there are plenty of photos to be viewed on this powerfulf search engine; I think I’ll post new ones in case I see a new photo set.
Napper: the hood every commuter wants
Especially on the dirty, noisy, overcrowded trains I’m used to take everyday to commute, in Italy, from home to workplace (50 km far, more or less); it could be useful having such a gadget conceived by the German designer Simone Wittmann: Napper, the commuters’ favourite hood.
Hoping it will not remain only a concept, we appreciate the idea and start praying for finding a seat where to make fully use of it!
The concept, Napper’ is aiming at making sleeping in public transport more comfortable and more secure. It consists of a hood, which‘s padding makes it cushy to lean against window panes. Bluetooth headphones are integrated in the hood, which, together with a software for the mobile phone, provide sound to fall asleep with, but also make sure you‘ll wake up just in time. In addition, the luggage is secured by a Bluetooth-lock, raising alarm as soon as it is moved away from the owner.
Crash science: train. Documentary in French
Hereafter a documentary (in French) about crash science applied on trains, especially high speed ones. Four more parts available on YouTube.
Travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway… from home!
Ever dreamt of a long journey on probably the most legendary and well known railway? I’m talking about the 9226 km linking Moscow to Vladivostok: the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Well, if you think you’re out of money at the moment to buy one return ticket, or simply suffer the cold Russian temperatures, you’ll probably be interested in a virtual journey: free, comfortable and perhaps exciting as the real one!
Thanks to the co-operation between Google and Russian Railways now it’s possible to enjoy 150 hours of train travel looked from the window as you was sat on a velvet seat of a heavy Russian train. During the travel some Russian songs, famous quotes or simply the steel noise of the wheels on rails will bring you through cities and landscapes you’d probably want to see for real!
What’s going on the Swiss railways?
There’s a smart and clear way Swiss travellers have to check the punctuality of their train. As well there’s a way for rail enthusiast to be always up to date with every train movement on SBB net. The first one is pretty useless considering the well known efficiency of Swiss railways.
Frankly, I have not understood who is the creator of the web application but www.swisstrains.ch is for sure one of the best site I found that let the users track a train position on Google Maps including statistics, timetables and possibility to make queries per train number or per station.
Interesting the “follow” function that shows real time positions of a specific train, something like a radar monitoring Swiss traffic.
No Pants Subway Ride 2010
Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, the group Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places.
Based in New York City it has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents. Among the executions there’s the No Pants Subway Ride day whose first time is dated 2002.
The 2010 edition took place in NY and 43 more cities last 10th of January:
On Sunday, January 10th, 2010 over 5,000 people took off their pants on subways in 44 cities around the world. In New York, our 9th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride had over 3,000 participants, spread out over six meeting points and ten subway lines. Enjoy the video first and then go behind the scenes with our mission report and photos.
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Below the video on YouTube reporting from New York.
Bergensbanen. 7 1/2 hours of train ride documentary
From NRK beta:
Friday November 27th 2009, over 1,2 million Norwegians watched parts of “Bergensbanen” on NRK2. The longest documentary ever? At least the longest we have made, almost 7 1/2 hours, showing every minute of the scenic train ride between Bergen on the Norwegian west coast, crossing the mountains to the capital of Oslo.
Bergensbanen is 100 years in 2009, and the documentary was a wild idea from NRK staff that came through, and was, surprisingly, a big success.
On Twitter, this became the thing to talk about in Norway. Over 1 000 tweets with #bergensbanen were posted, and even more when we ran the program again two days later.
Now we want to give the material to our viewers, the whole thing, for download.
The documentary had picture-in-picture clips with videos about Bergensbanen, a reporter interviewing people on the train, music and two cameras pointing to the sides of the train. Because of rights, we had to remove the music and many videoclips, so we decided to make a clean front camera version for this download. It’s recorded on a Sony 700 camera in XDCAM HD 1080 50i. The camera has a 30 seconds buffer, making it possible to switch disks when needed. So we have a continuous recording of 7 hours.
Full history here.
The documentary can be downloadad using this torrent file [22GB]. A reduced version of the documentary is available on YouTube.
Necessities for future high speed rolling stock
Following a news published on Via Libre site, I found really interesting this document including a list of the high speed/very high speed trains running all over the world and a good basic research regarding future necessities of high speed rolling stock.
The report was pulished by UIC – International Union of Railways.
The railway sector is undergoing major change both in Europe and the rest of the world. These changes include the relationship between railways and industry, inter modal competition, interoperability, liberalization of railway passenger traffic in 2010 and the prospect of future development of High Speed in the USA, South America, the Middle East, India and elsewhere. This means railway undertakings will have to change their approach to tendering for new high speed rolling stock. To this end, this report gives an overview of issues relating to high speed rolling stock which should be taken into account and recommends the establishment of common standards for high speed. It should be pointed out that the standards for high speed would depend on the circumstance of the geographical area where the high speed train is operated.
I’ve also uploaded the file to the new Railway 2.0 document repository on Scribd. Hereafter an embedded version of the document.
Necessities for future high speed rolling stock
Barcelona en tranvía – Barcelona by tram
Having a look to the Europa Film Treasures website I found this short and very interesting video whose story is presented herafter (source: EFT website).
It’s nice to feel emotions in b&w of people crossing the track, staring at the marvellously brought by the tramway and first video recorder apparatus. A scene not so different from modern curiosity linked to Google Street View Cars taking shoots around metropolis.
Above a YouTube version of the film that can be watched in better quality clicking this link.
This film is part of a documentary series on Barcelona directed by Ricardo de Baños (1884-1939). This pioneer of the new Spanish cinema makes multiple film reports on his native town and surroundings: The Parks (Los Parques) in 1907, A Bird-Eye View of the Port (Barcelona y su puerto a vista de pájaro) and The Monserrat in 1909.
Ricardo de Baños directs his first film in 1904. He also authored numerous fiction films amongst which Blood and Sand (Sangre y Arena) in which he fosters the major national genres: filmed operetta (sp.: zarzuela), bullfighting films and regional fictions.
This exceptional cameraman captures with originality Barcelona modernization through a subjective camera. For the Universal Exposition of 1888, Barcelona acquires important infrastructures, in which she takes much pride, such as: town gas, electricity and especially the tram.
The 1888 Exposition launches the first surge of Modernism, term chosen to designate Catalan Modern Art. Barcelona ranks as the artistic capital of Spain. The tram goes up the Paseo de Gracia, already bearing the stamp of the architect Antoni Gaudi I Cornet (1852-1926). The famous Casa Milà has been a building site for already two years. The tram then dashes to the heights of the new city.
The Editing Company Ricardo de Baños brought the standard print of a nitrate element in 1986 to the Spanish film archives of Madrid. A negative print of this same print was restored in 1997, the nitrate film base being in a very bad state.
The story of the Advanced Passenger Train
YouTube is too full of resources, even for railway enthusiastic. I was pretty surprised to learn that the very basis of modern tilting trains was born in the UK. Moreover APT joined other innovations I’ll try to summarise maybe in another post.