West Ealing gets battery train infrastructure
This is an exciting time for battery train technology! And that despite the news that HS2 has been all but abandoned. Today trains began serving Headbolt Lane station from Kirby where the present Merseyrail 3rd rail system ends. It was hardly worth the effort to electrify to Headbolt Lane especially…
Noah & Federer ride the GPX!
On the heels of the launch of the Goldenpass Express (GPX) late last year came the revelation that Roger Federer had been lined up for a publicity stint on behalf of the Montreux Oberland Bernois (MOB). Previously Federer had done other Swiss tourist publicity films including rail based ones and…
Five get to Bristol in a jiffy
London’s very own ‘famous five’ (the Crossrail central core stations that is) on the Elizabeth line are giving fantastic journey opportunities to the west. GWR has made play of this fact by launching a new advertising campaign extolling the benefits of the Elizabeth line. What that means is those five…
New shoes for London Underground
New shoes commemorating London’s Underground were officially on sale today (1 Feb 2023.) They’re made by the London based shoe company Mallet. It may not have been realised by those who covered the new product in the media however the shoes were created to celebrate the 160th anniversary of London’s…
Rails – to the Moon
Sylvester Marsh was a New England entrepreneur whose proposed mountain line received considerable ridicule when the idea was put forward in the late 1850s – for it was seen as a ‘railway to the moon!’ People thought the idea most inconceivable and it was a struggle for Marsh to get…
Rhätische Bahn sets a record!
The Rhaetian Railway established a record for the world’s longest narrow gauge passenger train and exploited the scenic abilities of one of its best lines through the Alps for that attempt. The company ran the 1.9-kilometre-long train composed of 100 coaches on its UNESCO heritage world famous Albula line between…
Tis wasn’t Robert Browning’s doing!
It is often claimed Robert Browning came up with the idea the area he lived in should be known as Little Venice. At no time did he ever claim any notion of this nor did he write anything that indicated this should be the case. So who was it responsible…
UK’s monorails
It would often be thought the British Isles and Ireland have no monorails and its Germany (with its two Schwebebahns and the Dusseldorf monorail) or Japan that have a good number of monorails. Surprisingly the UK too once had a number of monorail systems in some its towns and cities…
The best London tube photo ever? (revisited)
Was this photograph from 1937 somehow the best ever taken on London’s tube system? It’s certainly a very unusual composition for its time because it suggests a substantial abstraction and mystique. We do not know who the subject is other than its a guy in a bowler hat and his…
Elizabeth line: ‘ship impact protection’
Ship impact protection? What the heck is that? Well its a means of protecting something from being hit by ships. You know ships can be pretty nasty if they collide with something, say another boat, a quay or even buildings sited alongside water. Thus its said that Canary Wharf is…