Tag: europe

  • The picturesque upper Lötschental is where the recent calamity involving the village of Blatten occurred. It is a disaster of gigantic proportions and the huge avalanche and mud slide from the Birch glacier has buried the village to a depths of between 50 and 200 metres. That’s pretty deep if one thinks about it. Fifty…

  • In writing about railways and canal tunnels one might perhaps wonder why railways and canals in general are not the subject of discussion – apart from the Railway and Canal Historical Society who have existed since the 1950s with the aim of bringing history and topics on both together. There’s no doubt railways were substantially…

  • The Opicina tram in Northern Italy, the world’s only tramway of its kind, has been shut nearly 5 years. Following an accident on Via Commerciale between Trieste and Opicina in August 2016, it was forced to close. The line was meant to reopen in March 2020 but then came the COVID pandemic. The last time…

  • The Köln-Bonner Eisenbahn’s (KBE – or the Cologne to Bonn Railway) Rheinuferbahn once provided local and express trains between Köln and Bonn. There was a substantial freight operation too with large marshalling yards servicing local industries. The company stayed independent to the very end and it would have been around today had its finances not…

  • Revisiting Meudon

    Meudon is a major icon in the history of photograph and its often used as an example in the evolution of photographic composition. Not only that its a famous railway picture. The scene depicts a subject carrying a wrapped parcel (probably a painting) up Rue du Docteur Vuillieme whilst a steam engine is seen crossing the lofty…