Ze Train! Ze Train!

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Planes, trains or automobiles? What is your favorite way to travel 500 miles?

It has to be the train.  Unlike a car, I can sit, stand, walkabout.  All traffic is going in the same direction.  Unlike a plane, I won’t crash into a mountain and have to eat my fellow passengers.  Even I don’t like my food that much.  But I do like trains, so here are some interesting facts for you:

• The earliest railway in Great Britain was built between October 1603 and October 1604.  Which was a bit of a waste of time, as trains hadn’t been invented yet.
• The first railway in America was used in 1826.  That was in the days when ideas flowed this way to that, and not the other way round.
• The steepest Cogwheel railway in the world is in Switzerland. It has a gradient of 48%.  Rather like their chocolate.
• Great Britain has over 40,000 bridges on the rail system.  If you’re lucky, the one in your area will be open for use.
• The longest straight stretch of railway is in Australia. The part without any curves is 478km (301 miles) long.  This might be the one time I’d choose to fly.
• The heaviest train weighs more than 27,000 elephants.  In the scale of things, that’s a pretty big scale.
• In the 1800s, trains moved at peak speeds of 25mph.  Ah, the good old days, when trains moved so quickly.
• The only railway to go to the top of a volcano was built on Mount Vesuvius in Italy, in 1880.  The ride down was much faster.
• There was rush hour traffic on the Oregon-California trail.  The more things change…
• The fastest train in the world is the TGV in France. It is a similar train to the Eurostar which runs in the UK and across to France and Belgium. It can go at 515km (322 miles) an hour – four and a half times faster than a car on the motorway.  A motorway in Europe, that is; in Britain, it’s forty-four and a half times faster.
• Central Station has the largest platform in the world.  That used to be true; now it’s Lady Gaga.
• In test runs, the French TGV reached speeds of 584km per hour and when it braked it took 10 miles to stop.  Bet that aircraft carrier is looking mighty nippy round about now.
• The longest possible journey on one train can be taken between Moscow and Vladivostok in Russia, on the Trans-Siberian Express. The journey is 9,297km (5,857 miles) long.  No wonder Dr Zhivago is such a boring book.
• The largest station in the world is Grand Central in New York. It has 44 platforms.  Lady Gaga is working on a fiendish plot to steal them for her next video.
• Even in full emergency, it can take a train a mile or more to stop.  This means if the engineer can see you, it is already too late to stop for you.  Moral: stay off the track.
• Time was standardised by the introduction of railway timetables.  ‘The train arriving at platform 1 is due at four minutes past sunset’ wouldn’t work on cloudy days.

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Related articles

• Planes, trains or automobiles which is your favorite way to travel 500 miles? (laurieanichols.wordpress.com)
• The Lure Of The Railways (gilliansblog.wordpress.com)
• IN PICTURES: The World’s Most Dangerous Train System (businessinsider.com)
• http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/cardholders/kidszone/railway-facts/fun_facts
• http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com/Art/494270/53/5-interesting-facts-about-trains.html

Beauty: It’s Relative

For the prompt, beauty, from Viewfromtheside.

Apart from my two babies, obviously, the most beautiful view I ever saw was of the green fields of Greater Manchester from the air, as we came into land.  I had just left South Africa with my children, practically running on to the plane to get away from the violence that followed in the years after the 1994 election.

When I finally went back for a visit, I cried as we came in to land at Johannesburg, because I was coming home.

What did I get most out of my fourteen years in South Africa?  A little crazy.

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Joke 117

A man was just waking up from anesthesia after surgery, and his wife was sitting by his side.  His eyes fluttered open and he said, “You are beautiful.”  Then he fell asleep again. 

His wife had never heard him say anything like that before, so she stayed by his side.  A few minutes later, his eyes fluttered open and he said, “You are pretty.”  The wife was disappointed because instead of “beautiful” it was now “pretty”.

She waited a while longer.    Once more he opened his eyes and spoke, “You are cute.”

She said, “First I was beautiful, then pretty, and now cute.  What’s going on?”

Her husband replied, “The drugs are wearing off.”