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.
Should US copy Chinese plan?
According to The Transport Politic blog it should be smarter to focus on few high speed lines trying to use them as much as possible to serve not only routes connecting stations served by HSL but also those cities linked to old lines which can benefit of travel time reduction on the high speed segment. Of course it is a giants’ war based on huge territories that would require amazing investments to operate in the next few years a wide net of bullet trains. TTP basically focuses on a scheme that results well balnaced in countries like Spain in spite of the double gauge net:
A large regional passenger rail network, operating at low-to-medium speeds (60-90 mph), must serve most of the country, reaching almost all destinations. This network could operate on cheaply upgraded freight track, which we in the United States are privileged to have in abundance.
A select few main lines, operating at high speeds (150-220 mph), should serve the country’s largest cities only, and the cities well positioned in between. This network would have to be built at great expense and virtually from scratch.
Trains must be able to operate on both types of track, so that trains can take advantage of high-speed segments, but can also serve smaller destinations not directly on high-speed lines.
[image: The Transport Politic]
The Passenger Train, 1954
I found this intersting video on YouTube describing a typical travel by train during the 50s. Young Bob – at his first travel by train – guides us to his destination (Lamy, US) on board of a Santa Fè train showing us onboard and offboard life. Enjoy this old fashioned railway travel with some things that unfortunately have been lost on modern high speed journeys!
Choosing the right word
Almost everyday in a globalised world we, railway people, face the reality of working in English. Sometimes it can happen we are looking for the right word to indicate “that damn piece of train” we know in our native language but unfortunately not in English.
Luckily Internet is full of resources helping us and making our job easier. I know, there are plenty of paper dictonaries we can buy but what about trying to use free dictionaries when we can reach them just clicking on a link?
I think a good basis to start with can be the Railway Technical Terminology Dictionary by Japanese RTRI (Railway Technical Research Institute) offering drawings and traslations in English, German, French, Chinese and Japanese (of course!) of basic railway related terms.
It worths a bookmark.
Spreading railway researches
I’ve always been a supporter of the freedom of knowledge, a reason why I opened this private blog to share what I feel can be useful to others like me in the specific sector I work for. It’s the first initiative of this kind I’ve heard about: Via Libre a well-known Spanish magazine focused on railway topics opened this week a new website Vía Libre Investigación Ferroviaria aiming to collect papers regarding results coming from R&D studies linked to railway world in general.
Universities, professionals, professors, researchers are invited to share and publish the results of their investigations. Given the localisation of Via Libre, papers will be submitted (I hope only for a while) in Spanish.
A night in the London’s Underground
“London has the oldest underground transportation system in the world. What happens when the last train has left the station and the escalators stop?”. This was the question raised by Wired popular magazine to introduce a short video report explaining the behind the scenes or better to say “behind the service” populating the London Underground by night. When the last train goes to sleep a team of track workers takes care of the clock’s gears in order to let it work perfectly during the following days.
[video: Wired]