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We’re late for the train! But we must board it! How can this be accomplished? A couple in Burma demonstrates one technique.
via The Presurfer
Gurkhas, the Nepalese elite soldiers in the service of Britain and some of its former colonies, sometimes fight with their traditional kukri knives (pictured). One retired Gurkha was carrying his knife when a train in India that he was riding was robbed by forty men. The robbers unwisely chose to not immediately surrender. The ex-soldier then killed three, wounded eight, and drove off the rest:
The band of about 40 robbers, some of whom were travelling as passengers, stopped the train in the Chittaranjan jungles in West Bengal around midnight. Shrestha– who had boarded the train at Ranchi in Jharkhand, the place of his posting–was in seat no. 47 in coach AC3.
“They started snatching jewelry, cell phones, cash, laptops and other belongings from the passengers,” Shrestha recalled. The soldier had somehow remained a silent spectator amidst the melee, but not for long. He had had enough when the robbers stripped an 18-year-old girl sitting next to him and tried to rape her right in front of her parents. He then took out his khukuri and took on the robbers.
“The girl cried for help, saying ´You are a soldier, please save a sister´,” Shrestha recalled. “I prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister,” he added. He took one of the robbers under control and then started to attack the others. He said the rest of the robbers fled after he killed three of them with his khukuri and injured eight others.
Link via MArooned | Photo: Canadian Content
Well, this is what happens. A diesel locomotive with a 4400 hp V16 engine passed through Independence, Louisiana. It lost a piston and threw it straight through a house. You can see more photos of the damage at the link.
Link via Jalopnik | Photo: AgTalk
Tired of your neighbors? Swedish architecture firm Jagnafalt Milton may have a solution. It recently won a competition to develop the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes. The company proposes erecting buildings on railroad tracks so that they can be moved as desired:
It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-birth cabins, along with a two-storey suite. It also imagined lookout towers, kitchens, lifeguard stations, changing rooms, and — in true Swedish spirit — a sauna.
The idea, says the agency, was to use the city’s railway infrastructure — left behind from the days when it was an maritime construction town, building oil rigs — as a basis for its future. Konrad Milton, one of the partners in the company, told Wired.co.uk: “As we see it there are two major benefits. First, it’s easier to put buildings on existing train tracks than to demolish the tracks and build regular building foundations. Secondly the city of Åndalsnes has different needs depending on season.”
He continued: “Summertime the city is full of tourists from cruise ships and hikers — during this time there is a need for hotels and shopping. Wintertime the climate is harsh and there is less activity but a need for climate shelters and public indoor activities. By changing the building line-up according to seasons and events the city can become truly flexible.”
Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Jagnafalt Milton
After 14 years of work, Switzerland has finished drilling through 57 kilometers of rock to create the world’s longest railway tunnel. It’ll be years before it’s ready for trains, but the hole itself is complete:
The tunnel is just over 4 km longer than the Seikan rail tunnel in Japan, which at 53.9 km had previously been the longest rail tunnel in the world.
Completion of the Gotthard Base Tunnel will cut the travel time between Zurich and Milan in Italy by 60 minutes to two-and-a-half hours and provide an easier and more economic route for heavy freight trains.
The tunnel — which is in fact composed of two single-track tunnels — cost $10.6 billion (£6.6 billion).
Since the first preparations for the tunnel were laid in 1996, over 2,500 workers have taken part in its building according to AlpTransit Gotthard, the company constructing the tunnel. It is due to be operational by the end of 2017.
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Grand Central Terminal in New York City is the largest train station in the world, processing 700,000 visitors a day. It’s an impressive demonstration of technology and logistics, and Daniel Terdiman at cnet has written an article about its many hidden secrets. Among them is a train station within it that was built to hide President Roosevelt’s use of a wheelchair:
FDR was from New York state and often returned to New York City. Because his physical condition was not understood by a public that likely would have been unsympathetic to seeing the commander-in-chief in a wheelchair, the president would arrive in New York on a special private train.
But instead of pulling into a normal platform and having a normal train car, FDR arrived on a custom car that contained his 1932 armor-plated Pierce-Arrow limousine. By the time the train would get into the secret tunnels, the president would be inside the limo, and when it hit the platform, the car would be driven out through special, wide doors and then into a special wide elevator. He would then alight into the ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel above.
The secret train car was armor-clad, and had bullet-proof glass, which in those days meant little more than many, many layers of glass, Brucker said. In addition, a series of vents along the top of the train car were actually gun ports, and it featured unique wheel assemblies that allowed no lateral movement. That was because any such movement would have shaken FDR out of his wheelchair.
Link via Make | Photo by Flickr user bennie719 used under Creative Commons license
Daylight Saving Time ends in most of the United States a 2AM on Sunday, November 1st (Hawaii and Arizona have been on standard time all summer). We remember which way to set our clocks by thinking “spring forward, fall back.” It makes you wonder how we ever got our clocks coordinated in the first place. Believe it or not, standard time and time zones were the railroad industry’s idea.
“In the early 19th century … localities set their own time,” said Bill Mosley, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“It was kind of a crazy quilt of time, time zones, and time usage. When the railroads came in, that necessitated more standardization of time so that railroad schedules could be published.”
In 1883 the U.S. railroad industry established official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. Congress eventually came on board, signing the railroad time zone system into law in 1918.
The 1918 law assigned the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the time zones, and legislated Daylight Saving Time. Later, the decision whether to observe DST was left up to the states. Link
