Here is an article from Times of India which elaborates on the grandiose plans of MRVC for rakes to be procured under MUTP phase 2.

If all goes as planned, Mumbai could get as many as six new Siemens-Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) 12-car rakes every month. That is, if both Central and Western railways agree to standard coaches under the second phase of MUTP.

In my opinion, at this stage it is very difficult to have a standard coach configuration for WR and CR. Modifying the existing coaches will take huge amounts of time and money. Moreover the modifications cannot be carried out over night on all rakes. It will cause great hardships and inconvenience to commuters during the transition period if half the trains on each railway have one coach configuration and half of them have another one!

Senior officials from the Integral Coach factory (ICF) said they were in talks with MRVC and the MMRDA to jack up production rates. At present, ICF manufactures as many as 72 variations of coaches as both the railways have different coach specifications and positioning.

I wonder how they have 72 different types of coaches for EMUs. Even if we assume that each and every coach in the configuration of WR and CR is unique, there can be maximum 24 types of coaches.

The new rakes will apparently last for 40 years as opposed to the current 25 years. Nothing new in that. There are a few 1969 built EMU coaches still in service on WR. Moreover, I have my doubts about the current rakes lasting 25 years after looking at the condition of some of them in 3 months.

Cost of new rakes will be around Rs 54 Crores, double the cost of present rakes! This presents even more opportunities for kickbacks. It is useless to expect better workmanship from ICF. So be ready for more flimsily built rakes.

Floods and fog, originally uploaded by magnum_lady.

I took Lucy to Dublin yesterday to see Little Boots in concert. She was brilliant (I’ll do a blog about that tomorrow).
Jono was meant to be coming as well, but his back is too bad to stand for any length of time. So he stayed with Andy.

We went on the train and because of the floods the train line between Carrick on Shannon and Longford is under between 3-5 feet of water. So we had to get a bus from Carrick to Longford and the same on the way back. So it took around 4 hours each way Sligo-Dublin instead of the usual 3.

This photo is of Carrick on Shannon, it’s hard to see the floods because of the fog. The yellow building you can see a tiny bit of is the Landmark Hotel.

The main N4 road towards Tesco and the retail park is completely flooded so there is a detour up through the town of Carrick on Shannon and down by the MBNA building. There were big tailbacks of traffic and the bus driver was telling us that the traffic was so bad the other day it took almost two hours for him to get from Carrick on Shannon to Longford.

So if you are travelling in that direction be prepared for delays.

Thanks so much for the good wishes for C. So far so good.

Only this morning I was reading some European rail updates on the excellent The Man in Seat 61 website. I wanted to read about the forthcoming drop in journey time between London and Amsterdam by Eurostar and Thalys. But as I’ve been looking east this year, I noted with interest the high speed Russian link between Moscow and St Petersburg.

In a sinister example of synchronicity, only a few hours later I read about the bomb explosion on the very same line last night. It has very quickly been blamed on terrorism, reportedly due to very obvious clues like the sound of an explosion and a crater.

Likely suspects, according to the BBC, include militants from the North Caucus and pro-Nazi nationalists. It’s speculated that because of the regular business and political clientele on this train, it was a direct attack on the ruling class.

Whatever the results of the ensuing investigation into the darker corners of modern Russia, it’s sure to be shrouded in claim and counter claim. I’m currently reading Edward Lucas’ The New Cold War; despite its rather unsubtle bias and sometimes rhetorical language, it does raise worrying questions about the direction of this wounded bear.

In the early days of the Putin era, the 1999 bombing of Moscow apartment blocks shook the country. Chechen terrorists were implicated, and this is highly plausible. But controversy has surrounded these attacks, with some suggesting that a rattled population, looking for a strong leader and ready to ‘hit back’, was just what some elements wanted. Others have been more specific, and their allegations can easily be found on the internet.

The latest incident, the second on this line in as many years, will do nothing for the idea of relocating some governmental departments to St Petersburg – or Russian tourism. Any military ramifications in this volatile region remain to be seen.

Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. I heard a holidaying Russian, watching this November’s Berlin Wall celebrations in a kebab shop near the Brandenburg Gate, tell a Dutch man at the next table that “This is not a cause for celebration in our country”.

Despite the USSR’s consequent breakup, almost two decades ago, the fallout is still being felt. The pricing and distribution of natural gas may be the weapon of choice for the big boys these days, but as the new order settles old scores, in the shadow world of the old empire there’s still a role for bullets and bombs.

 Le décor de nuit à la sortie de Bruxelles, après la gare du Midi : les voies qui bifurquent en tous sens, sur terre ou sur ponts, en ligne droite ou en courbe ; qui s’arrêtent parfois sans préavis, là où les ont laissées les travaux du TGV en cours ; qui longent l’usine Volkswagen et ses interminables structures en tôles ondulées ou un massif d’arbres à papillons décharnés le long de la Senne. Surgissent : au loin, la silhouette fantomatique du chantier des anciennes brasseries Wielemans-Ceuppens ; plus haut, les immeubles de l’Altitude Cent surplombant le parc de Forest ; de l’autre côté, la tour de  refroidissement de l’usine électrique de Drogenbos et, plus près des voies, les taches scintillantes des bassins de l’usine de retraitement d’eaux usées. Les lumières, partout : le long des voies ; celles des usines ; des rues, plus lointaines, de cette ville que nous quittons et dont on oublie déjà que c’est d’une ville dont il s’agit tant, la nuit, les lieux deviennent méconnaissables, défigurés par l’obscurité. Surréaliste. Parfois, j’ai envie que ces trajets soient interminables, qu’ils me portent, à travers un univers étrange, jusqu’à la fin de la nuit. Parfois ? Souvent : chaque fois que je n’ai pas une bonne raison d’être pressée de rentrer, j’ai envie que ces trajets n’en finissent plus…

In a recent post, I tried to start a deeper discussion with Milan about what it means to act ethically in these needful times with respect to climate change.

I’m not sure if he meant this post as a response to my post, or as a response to the ongoing discussion on carbon ethics – but either way, it really does not does not “bring about any clarity to the many discussions we’ve had here about carbon ethics”. It really just repeats what we already know – action must begin collectively and immediately - and from there re-makes the assumption that it is desirable that, in full knowledge that collective action will not begin immediately, that still “we individually [should] want to mirror what the world as a whole needs to do”.

I’ll repeat the argument I’ve made before, and again, I’ll give reasons for my position. (While it makes me sound like a liberal, giving reasons for arguments is a central requirement to dialogue. Without reason-giving, it is not really possible to hold others responsible for what they’ve said.) I do not think it is not desirable that we individually, as individuals, want to mirror what the world needs to do. In fact, I think the notion that we should do as individuals what the world as a whole should do while the world isn’t doing it is deeply misguided. The fact the world isn’t doing it means the actual cuts needed are deeper and sharper – so what justifies someone personally cutting their carbon more slowly when the world’s inaction produces a requirement for even sharper cuts?

In fact, I would not advocate any carbon ethics that remains on the level of individually setting an example where that example is “what is required of everyone”, rather than attempting to demonstrate what is desirable about acting socially, together as a society, to mitigate climate change. However, I would not recommend amending your position to give a different curve of carbon cut-back because cutting back on carbon emissions is largely not something we can do as individuals – it requires investment on the societal level.

Taking into account the importance of the societal, my claim is that it is desirable that we “mirror what the world needs to do” – together. The emphasis needs to be on the “we”, not on the “as individuals”. Rather than acting “individually” – any action to be effective must foster social movements, activism, political pressure, and so on. I don’t think it is particularly virtuous to live a “moral” (pious), personally low carbon life – the relevant virtue here is in spurring and organizing the social transformation we so desperately need if we want our children not to live in a much more violent and hostile place than we. Of course, I do not mean to construct a false opposition between personal and social action. Rather, what I mean to show is that a personal action can either be individualizing or fostering of a social movement.

I think the bus/train decision is an example of where these values diverge in an individual’s choice. I don’t mean to criticize your decision – just some of the logic you stated with regards to the issue. There are lots of reasons to take the bus that are good reasons. However, specifically looking at a comment responding to my post on high speed, overnight, and trans continental rail travel you wrote:

“Arguably, there is little point in getting people onto cross-country trains, until they have a significant climate advantage over air travel.”

I think this is misguided. The real effects of our actions are not only their immediate release of carbon, but also the extent to which they contribute to the societal will to spend to mitigate, to build a world appropriate for a carbon neutral future. Whether you like it or not, taking the bus cross country appears to others as embracing a low-carbon asceticism. In my experience, people seem deeply hostile to this.

We could debate whether it’s good or it’s bad that there is a hostility to asceticism – but the fact is there is a deep and longstanding hostility to it, and having one’s actions spur social movement building means being sensitive to which values one can shift and which ones one cannot shift. There is room for movement, for example, on the value of working 40 hours a week, or 46 to 50 weeks a year – look at the idealization of German Vacation time in Canada (especially our immediate experience of it in the West in the form of RV tourism), and also the strength of the work-less party with their extremely sensible policies.

Looking at the long term ramifications of social choice, I come to the conclusion that the right value to shift towards with respect to travel is slow travel – accessible, utilitarian and comfortable. We should pressure Via to shift away from tourism service towards useful travel service for all Canadians, which means, for transcontinental service, daily departures and restoring the Montreal – Ottawa – Sudbury connection.

Slow travel also endorses more travel by bicycle. There is no reason why trips of less than 100km, when time is not the primary issue, can not be made increasingly by bicycle. What is required to open this up to more of the population is investment in bicycle routes, even dedicated tracks. Despite my love of road bikes, maybe the right value here is unpaved maintained trails, since they can simply be grated when a paved trail would need resurfacing.

Slow travel requires more time than plane travel – so this goes hand in hand with becoming more mindful, more aware, more intentional of our actions. Milan is right that we need to ditch flagrantly needless trips – and switching from air to rail means it is no longer possible to have that quick weekend in Paris, or a day trip to New York for a business meeting. But it also means increasing the value of a visit we do choose to make – since it will not be as quick and easy to move from place to place, we will value those visits we do make that much more greatly.

I love train travel. It’s great, isn’t it? Especially when it’s empty. Other human beings ruin train travel. I was on a train recently, going from Leeds to Sheffield, and there were so many people on it that some of us had to sit on the floor in the compartment between the carriages where the toilet was. Including me, which really got on my tits. I had one lad sat next to me doing his Trigonometry homework on one side and some slag blearing Tinchy Stryder from her phone at full volume on the other. It was like I’d stumbled upon Purgatory and was never going to get out.
When a train is empty, there’s something quite peaceful about it. Tranquillity. Time to think, relax. Maybe even read a book and enjoy the *cough* beautiful *cough* countryside. When it’s like that, I always get a window seat with four seats and a table to myself. As soon as someone comes in to sit down next to/opposite me, I immediately tell them to piss off. No hesitation, I just do it. If they refuse, I move to another window seat with four seats and a table while giving them a rather sinister glare.

Maybe one day I’ll get a window seat with four seats and a table whilst having my pockets stuffed with gelignite…

This is a random post because I haven’t really done much for the past few days except hang out with MD and go to Milan.  But, of course, there is a hot guy at the end of the story…in  a sense.

MD has been fabulous and allowed me to escape crazy roommate for two nights straight, as well as enabling me to decimate what was left of my meager bank account.  (It had to be done, I can’t be walking around wearing American size ‘medium’ anymore….as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s like wearing an Italian XL…and looks sloppy at best.)  I feel I might as well use up the money here, since upon my return to America, I will be (barely) only one step up from a customer service slave to the masses, and only desperation will allow me to refill the account without slowly poisoning the denizens of my city with arsenic.

I also feel, as all ‘real’ gays should, that if a pair of jeans looks cute, you have to buy them, regardless of cost or quality.  Or, more often in my case, if the salesperson is cute, and lies about the jeans to your face, you must still buy them.  It’s always best to bring ‘the honest friend’ along, especially one who is skillful in the art of train travel.

So, off we went to Milan yesterday. I in search of the rush really only Italy can provide, that of the perfect storm of way too much sugar, caffeine, and a dose of hot man-candy, MD, along for moral support and a variety of essential beauty products.

Once you see the picture below, I will once again lose some ‘Daniel P., world traveler points,’ but it was either start a bitch match with this guy, or only mildly suffer and then passive-aggressively punish the guy across from me with own my long legs instead.

After reading some other ridiculous blogs in which exclamation points are often used…in reference to things such as:

- “Europeans don’t have any sense of personal space!!!!! OMG, get away!!!”

- “OMG!!!  The toilet was just a hole in the ground, EWWW!!”

- “Everyone is always late to everything!!!  UGH! It’s so annoying!!”

- “OMFG! I got cut in line again!!”

- “Holy smokes!  How are Italians so skinny?  They eat nothing but pasta!!!!!”

- “Wow!!  Italians are soooo fabulously fashionable and put together!”

Most of these have moderately rational explanations (which I promise will be part of my “end of trip” post), and quite frankly are refreshing (at times), as I find Americans to be obnoxiously polite, slow, lazy, selfish, and often completely unaware of their surroundings.

But, this guy.  I mean really.

Now, I have learned to give up my well honed, “6-feet-at-all-times around me even if you’re my family” personal space, especially when on buses, or in the line at the grocery store (I mean really lady, are you smelling the back of my neck for a particular reason?).  But this guy was already sitting like this, in a packed train, even before he fell asleep.  I felt bad about it later, but the poor (apparently frightened at hearing English) guy across from me had to tuck his little Italian legs beneath his seat.  I’m sorry I’m 6 feet tall and you’re only 4.  Life is hard.  Now move those Ferragamos.

Upon arrival in Milan, one notices that it isn’t an attractive city at all.  Yes, I felt that the general populace is more smartly dressed, but they also tended to be older, richer, and smartly dressed in a boring “i’m a banker, but still attractive” kind of way.  But the city itself, minus the cathedral, was ‘meh.’ Turin is much more regal, interesting, and definitely cleaner.

(random attractive Italian cathedral)

(random attractive Italian, a destra)

After the prerequisite and oh-so-satisfying trip to La Rinascente, it was time for my secret real reason for being so excited about Milan… Included on our tour of the city was a visit to Chocolat!!  Holy smokes this place was good!  As far as my tour of gelato (megapost coming at some point, I swear) goes, it’s in the top three.  I almost couldn’t finish my cup o’ chocolatey goodness.  Almost.  It wins points for: most flavors of chocolate gelato (obviously), smart styling, the hiring of (chocolate) minorities, and the steady stream of extremely attractive Italian men sweeping in and out of the door for a quick ice cream, coffee, and/or hair check.

[Note to ALL travelers to Milan.  Bring a lighter.  Even if you don't smoke.  I promise you won't regret it.]

After more walking around in a carb-tastic, post-chocolate daze, and spending way too much money at H&M, we started walking by a line of people. To get into a store.  An Abercrombie & Fitch. Yes.  Here in Italy at last.  Three cheers for globalization!!!

I had already witnessed this phenomenon multiple times in NYC, where Europeans (and probably U.S. tourists from Texas) would line up literally around the block for the A&F on 5th avenue.

This is even more curious now, because:

A.  I may have gotten a tad older, but, once 40-yr-old gays started to wear A&F, it was a death knell for its coolness.  I could be wrong, but, I don’t think that it’s currently the pinnacle of “American” style and fashion it once may have been.

B.  Italians could buy a round-trip plane ticket to NYC, buy all of their clothes at the A&F there, and still save money than if they bought it in Milan.

C.  Um, now that it’s in Italy…it’s not really all that interesting, far away, or even very American anymore.  It’s like H&M in Atlanta.  H&M was only cool before it arrived in Atlanta because you were wearing clothes that could only be bought in Chicago or NYC.  Now, it’s just another GAP.

All this being said…..you KNOW I had to get my picture taken with the hot Italian A&F beefcake, whose soul purpose (like in America during the holidays) is to stand in front of the door and look hot… I mean, c’mon! Look at him!   W* Milano!!

Um, someone give him a cookie please.

Also amusing is the guy in the background, whose smirk says: “Um, yeah, I know exactly what you’re up to mister”

After my sugar-high-enhanced heart palpitations began to slow, it was time to return home.  This time, having learned the hard way, I had ample legroom and armrest space…without having to cut anyone.

Also, a nice young lady heard us speaking in English (maaaayyyybe about how certain Italians could kiss our grits…) and wished us a Happy Thanksgiving.  It was sweet, but also a sign of how far I’ve literally and figuratively come, as I had no idea (or cared) that it was even turkey day.

Upon return, the wonderful FS procured all I need to survive in this world: french fries and pizza with four kinds of meat…mmmm…Thanks MD and FS!!

(*short for viva!)

Who knew complaining about pedestrian access to the waterfront is a Toronto tradition dating back to the late 1800s? During over 151 years of Union Station history, Torontonians demanded improved waterfront access as crossing a dozen train tracks was often a matter of life and limb.

So says Derek Boles, railway historian for the Toronto Railway Historical Association, board member at Heritage Toronto, and chair of the Union Station Revitalization Public Advisory Group. He provided an illustrated history of Union Station at a North Toronto Historical Board meeting in the Northern District Library (40 Orchard View Drive) on Nov. 25.

Toronto's second Union Station between York & Simcoe Sts., 1873 (courtesy image)

The familiar commuter train hub at 65 Front Street West wasn’t Toronto’s first Union Station either.

“The first was in service from 1858 to 1871; the second from 1873 to 1896. The third one was an extensive alteration to the 1873 station and it served until the present Union Station opened in 1927,” he said. “With all these train tracks being built, access to the waterfront was a real problem for the people of Toronto . . . the great crossing issue remained an important priority with thousands of people streaming across the busy tracks.”

On May 16, 1853, the first steam-powered passenger train left Toronto for Aurora from a “wooden depot located close to the eastern entrance of today’s Union Station. Over the course of the next century, the railways were to have a profound impact on the City of Toronto and its geography.”

The first Union Station was shared by the Grand Trunk Railway Co., and two other companies. The second, considered to be the most opulent of its time, was opened on Dominion Day 1873 (the clock that once adorned the tower of that station is still in use today at the town hall in Huntsville, Ont.).

By 1884, the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. entered Toronto. Shortly thereafter the renovations were completed in 1896 and marked what was to be the third incarnation of Union Station. It functioned until 1907 though not necessarily to satisfactory levels.

“By this time, Union Station had become totally rundown . . . there were up to 200 trains a day, almost as many that come into it now,” he said.

And then there was the Great Toronto Fire of 1904. It cleared off all the buildings on the site for what later would become the present Union Station. Toronto Terminals Railway (a group of architects) was incorporated in 1906 to build a new Union Station but construction wouldn’t actually begin for another decade.

Once built, it sat vacant for seven years because of political disagreements over where tracks running in and out of the City should be laid. This was a huge issue in Toronto throughout the 1920s.

“You can only imagine how frustrated Torontonians must have been to have this beautiful, massive building, one of the largest and most impressive structures in the City, sitting empty for seven years while they were forced to use the old Union Station,” he said.

Leap ahead to 1966 when Toronto came dangerously close to losing Union Station. It was called inadequate for modern transportation needs and talk turned to replacing it with something more contemporary. New York City’s mighty Pennsylvania Station was being demolished between 1963 and 1966 and there was increasing pressure to do the same here.

The most serious threat to Union Station came in 1968 when the railways decided to commercially redevelop its land. “The railways were encouraged by a pro-development city council under Mayor William Dennison, who never saw a new building he didn’t like.”

In 1975 Union Station was declared a national historic site but the designation didn’t afford much protection; that came in 1990 with the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.

If you peer up today at the Front Street entrance, you can see the names of the railways that built it, which includes the Grand Trunk Railway. “By the time the station opened the Grand Trunk Railway was no longer in existence . . . none of their trains ever actually used the station.”

For an in-depth look at Union Station’s history, Boles’ new book on the subject, “Toronto’s Railway Heritage” (Arcadia Publishing), is available at Chapters-Indigo.

Ashu is in the office, actually our other office nearby, for the interview and we will be travelling to Indore together tonight. As this not ends there, we will then be going to his house from there, I’ll go and see Kunal and then me and Ashu, may be with Dheeraj, will go to Sanawad for the wedding of dear Amit Jain.

Amit Jain comes in full because Amit is way too common a name and we do have almost 5-6 friends with the same first name. Amit Johri, Amit Tiwari, Amit Jain, Amit Kasliwal, Amit Sisodia, Amit Twari (the other Amit Tiwari), Amit Punjabi and so on.

Then there will be a big party, and then the wedding and then will be moving back to Indore for return to Vadodara.

I hope Brijesh has made his travel arrangements till then otherwise we will be couch sharing in the return journey same way as me and Ashu are going to do tonight.

Rest updates later!

Thinking of getting a mobile with camera or carrying my digital camera from home as never posted any photographs here on WP.

On Wednesday, I went to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden to see their special exhibition on Suburbia. The exhibition wasn’t very good, to be honest – two small rooms of estate agent details from the 1930s, and lots of adverts from home-builders. But the rest of the museum is much better than you’d imagine, with much more interesting material covering quite a lot of the same ground – the coming of the Met Line was one of the central struts of the suburbs being developed, and it means there’s better stuff in the main body of the museum than in the slightly empty, slightly lacklustre display rooms.

If you only visit it once every fifteen years or so, the Museum is absolutely spellbinding, and walking into the old rolling stock is a real Proustian experience – some of the trains dating from the 1940s were still in use in the early 1980s on the Met Line, and it’s really odd strolling into a museum piece that you can remember using.

Each carriage has a little tableau to set the time period, and here’s a collection of the waxworks used. My favourite is the one below – the early 1960s, where the young dummies have been placed in such a way that it looks like they’re goading the guy in the suit and are about to attack him like a couple of ultraviolent Droogs.

Oddly, the Transport Museum is one of the handful of London museums that isn’t free – it costs £10 to go in, and confusingly, it’s actually £8, but with a voluntary £2 donation, and then they want to take all your details to get the Gift Aid tax rebate. I asked if I could pay £8, give them £2 as a donation, and not fill in the form, but it doesn’t work like that, apparently. These tax-dodges, eh? Not as simple as you’d think.

Following on from my big adventure to Barcelona earlier in the year, I’m off to Wales for the weekend. It’s going to take substantially longer to get there than it did to get to Barcelona. I’m going by train and I’m rather dreading the journey.

Fortunately Maggie, she of the occasional comments on this blog and provider of the link to the real life chocolate pizza, is putting me up for a night on the way there, so that breaks the journey a bit, but next week I shall be coming home from Wales in one feel swoop.

On the train I’ll be able to get up and stretch my legs now and then, and I might even be able to sleep for part of it, so it has advantages over car travel from an R.A. point of view. Hopefully I won’t get too madly stiff. What I’m worried about is the fact that I have a total of ten trains to catch in the next five days, excluding London Underground links which are the biggest pain of all, and the British train service is notoriously unreliable … to put it politely. Combine that with severe weather warnings across the south of England (I have to travel through London both ways), and it could be an ‘interesting’ weekend.

At least I’m looking forward to seeing Maggie and family and my friends in Wales. Pity that all their Christmas presents are due to arrive in the post to me at work today, and I’m not going into work – I didn’t time that very well!

TRIANG

6 PIECE TRANSCONTINENTAL SET

This is another super collectors locomotive set, from triang trains massive collection of vintage model railway.

Triang 6 piece Transcontinental Set, from triang trains.

It’s been a few weeks from my last post, as you may have noticed. I’m going to pretend that I have an actual audience here, rather than admit to talking to myself.

I’m also going to pretend that you’re deeply concerned about my well-being, so in that light, I’ll assure you that I’m well. Now. I caught whatever nasty cough-intensive crud that’s been going around work, and it’s sort sapped my ability to chase trains spastically as I’m normally known to do.

I ended up being off of work for almost a week in there somewhere, and in a fit of boredom after about day four, I ventured out of the house. I went and sat in my car by the tracks not far from my house, and waited. Nothing came.

I tried again a day or two later, and had similar luck.

After about a week of train nothingness, I gave up. Then, at the first sign that my health was improving, I hopped in the car and ran for Fostoria at the speed of light. Or, at no more than 4 miles over the speed limit.

Because I’m a good girl.

What I needed was simple: I needed trains. I needed lots of them in rapid succession. I needed not to sit staring at a green signal for an hour and a half without so much as a horn heard distantly down the tracks. I needed a signal that was going to turn green, and a train that was going to come.

Fostoria’s that kind of place.

At least, it is usually. On this particular Sunday afternoon, though, it most definitely wasn’t. I left cold, defeated, and broken. It was every bit as pathetic as you might imagine.

But first I took these pictures, so it’s not a total loss.

I sat at what I call Train Dork Alley, along the east-west CSX tracks that run right in front of the old Amtrak depot. Generally speaking, these tracks see the most action.

I have to admit, I was a little sad to keep seeing CSX coming at me. Not that there’s anything wrong with CSX, mind you, but I was hoping to catch something a little more rare headed east from far out in the western half of the country. So everytime I made out the ‘CSX’ on the front, my heart sank a little.

But only a little.

I always manage to get one good long train hauling nothing but autoracks in this same exact spot. After about the 22nd car, it gets a little monotonous, but I like seeing the names of all of the other railroad companies on the cars.

But really, any ol’ train will do.

I say that, but I should probably clarify: any ol’ diesel freight train will do. I think that covers it. The others are nice and everything, but they just don’t do it for me, ya know? I thought you’d understand.

Finally, something other than CSX! A Union Pacific! This is my second favorite railroad company, if you’re keeping count. BNSF, UP, then Norfolk Southern. But if I ever have a chance to go hang out with anyone from CSX, I’ll deny I just said any of that, and claim this site was hacked.

So there.

This marks the second time I’ve seen UP in Fostoria, and I was under the impression that UP doesn’t come this far east. Still, here they are, twice in 6 months. I’ve seen pictures of BNSF in Fostoria in the last 2 years (I’m fairly sure), so I’m hoping that one day all of my luck will come together at once and I’ll see a shiny orange and black locomotive headed down this same set of tracks.

A girl can dream, right?

Then I got bored with sitting still, and decided to check out a bundle of tracks I saw on my Google maps. It sits northeast of Fostoria on a county road. When I got there, I found this NS car mixing facility. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close to it without trespassing or having to sign in somewhere, so I stayed way out on the road and zoomed in as far as I could.

On the way back home, I pass through the town/village of Carey. Carey has some sort of cement/rock-breaking/quarrying operation just east of town, and if you turn down one of the residential side streets you can get kinda close to the tracks up on a hill. I’ve seen a CSX ‘motive back there before, but this time I found a Chessie System caboose!

There was some sort of attaching/connecting operation going on with the train cars (I’ve really got to learn what that’s called), so I listened to a little bit of bumping and clanging around before I decided to skedaddle and look for a better angle.

I circled back around toward the actual job site and saw a number of hoppers sitting around waiting to get loaded and sent off to wherever. I wasn’t able to find the caboose I’d seen before, but I did see several other Chessie System cars in the area.

Between the UP-led train and the Chessie System cars in Carey, I opted to call it a good day, instead of being bummed by the overall lack of activity and my generally cranky demeanor.

My days off change at work change next year, and I’ll be off during the week instead of on the weekends. I’m toying with the idea of making it a 2-day trip and staying the night in a hotel, especially once they break ground on the railpark. Then maybe I can buckle down and just gawk at train after train after train for hours on end, instead of worrying about running out of daylight and needing to head back south to Columbus.

For now, I’m looking ahead to next month and a road trip home to northeast Texas for Christmas. There isn’t much going on in that area as far as train traffic goes, but there are some spots in Memphis TN and Little Rock AR that look promising.

And I might just get a shot at BNSF out there. Talk about a Merry Christmas!

They never said it was going to be easy.  My first twelve weeks studying Journalism at Edinburgh Napier University have been an up and down, topsy-turvy, loop-de-loop plane crash of essays, emotions and seemingly endless amounts of time spent in front of this laptop.

The A-Team left to right: Robert/Hannibal Smith, Me/"Howlin' Mad" Murdock, er...Mikey, Hopee/B.A. Baracus, and Robyn a.k.a Face

My first tentative steps into university life have been somewhat marred by homesickness, resulting in every weekend up to this point been spent travelling down to Lockerbie on the train, seeing friends, family and the A-Team (you know who you are!), and then traipsing back to the station to be whisked back up to the capital and my little box of thoughts where i eat, sleep and dream of home.

That’s not to say that I’ve resented every minute of it, though sometimes it might sound like I have.  Over the past couple of months, as part of the course, I’ve been pushed to interview members of the public completely at random, I’ve visited the Scottish parliament and written a report on what I saw and I’ve written and laid out a magazine article for bmi’s Voyager magazine.  I doubt I would’ve had a chance to do all this if I hadn’t come to Edinburgh Napier University.

The first article I wrote for MMR1, the Scottish Parliament report, was fairly timid compared to what was to come.  After being put through all the mandatory security checks at the door (they’re pretty much the same as the ones you get at the airport) we were directed towards a flight of stairs with windows on all sides.  This took me back to times when I’d been climbing the stairs to the flume ride at Dumfries swimming pool, though what was waiting at the top would prove to be a damn site less exciting and, surprisingly, much more uncomfortable.

Upon reaching the top we were ushered through into the vast debating chamber, a quiet room with an array of fixed, wooden seats.  We were told to sit in some of the seats near the back, the second row before the huge window which gave a slightly obscured view of the street below, crammed in behind a wooden board, which didn’t appear to serve any purpose other than to give me pins and needles.

I found it hard to take concise notes on the debate which was going on below due to the two arrogant Englishmen behind us who joked and guffawed through the first hour or so, before they got up and left.  After this, I managed to get enough to write my article, but if they hadn’t left when they did, I may have just scrapped what little notes I’d have collected up to then and written a piece on why we need Scottish independence now!

Interviewing a complete stranger in Prince’s Street Gardens was a much more intimidating task.  I had written down some fairly broad questions I could ask whichever wanderer I would choose to prey upon in order to feed my journalistic hunger, but I really had no idea what direction the interview would go in.

In the end, I chose a the friendliest-looking person I could find – a chap sitting alone on one of the benches, enjoying the atmosphere in the end-of-summer sunset.  I figured, if nothing else, he would enjoy the company.

After working up the courage to speak to the solitary man, I approached him with more than a little trepidation.  His face quickly shifted from an “Oh no, here comes a bloody teenager to mug me” look to a “Hooray, someone who actually wants to hear what I’ve got to say” smile.  He was very happy to sit and recount the main points of his life to me, and it turned out to be an interesting little story.  It’s fascinating what you can find behind the faces of what we normally call “ordinary people”.

When charged with writing an article on a certain aspect of Edinburgh for “Voyager”, bmi’s in-flight magazine, I decided this would be a good opportunity to explore the city and do a spot of sightseeing myself.

The Sign for the Writers Museum

I had originally thought it would be a good idea to do the article on films set in Edinburgh, however I soon changed this to historical sites linked to famous books after further research revealed that many of the films set in the city were, in fact, shot mainly in Glasgow.  This turned out to be a much wider subject then the first one and I found it very interesting to write about.

For the magazine spread, we were to take photographs as well as write the article and a sidebar to go along with it.  This gave me an opportunity to get to know my way around Edinburgh, so, on a sunny Monday afternoon after my lectures had finished, I began my tour of Edinburgh’s famous literary sites on bicycle.

I visited the Elephant House and the National Library of Scotland before heading off to the Royal Mile.  From here, I found myself walking along Lady Stair’s close, which opens on to Makar’s court, and the Writer’s Museum.

A tall, narrow building, the museum is one of the city’s backstreet gems, with detailed exhibits on Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.  I found myself captivated by the quietness of the place, right up until the point when I walked into one of the rooms and an invisible voice spoke to me.

My mind somehow empty of rational thought, I shouted an expletive, probably louder than I should have in such a silent place, and bolted for the exit.  It wasn’t until I got outside into the crisp autumn sunset that I composed myself and decided it must’ve (hopefully!) been a recorded message designed to teach rather than terrify.

The 2009 Ferrari California which drew up as I fled the horrors of the Writer's Museum

It was a good thing I escaped the horrors of the Writer’s Museum when I did, for if I hadn’t, I would never have seen a brand spanking new, blood-red Ferrari California draw up to the kerb on the Royal Mile and then gaze in awe as the driver pressed the button which unfurled the car’s metal folding roof out of the rear clamshell.

And so, now, as my time on Multimedia Reporting 1 comes to a close, I find myself blogging about my experiences over my first semester at Edinburgh Napier University and actually beginning to realise that do quite I enjoy – in certain places, at least - this Journalism malarky.

However, if you talk to me next week when I’m doing my final Study Skills essay before the Christmas holidays, I might not say the same.

When I visited the Rubicon on Wednesday, I barely missed a young man who had just been in to piss on the stairs. Was he there, we ask ourselves, in some Calvin Harris inspired protest at the direction of contemporary art and culture? The staff seemed dubious. Of course he may not have urinated, for as one of the staff members hopefully observed, it could easily have been a spillage from the beer can he was holding. In either case, I’m still unsure whether he actually ventured upstairs to take in Donald Teskey’s new exhibition ‘Loops and Sidings’, because if not, I can’t help feeling he missed out.

With an endearing lack of pretension, Teskey described himself as ‘just another bloke on a train’, as he ventured out to capture some of the decaying spaces at the edge of the city. He has done this masterfully, with thickset oils that reveal a wonderful depth and poetry to the industrial parks and worn down factories he captures. Redrawn from mobile phone photos and snippets of film, the paintings play with the distinct sense of motion that traveling by train can offer, with a focus that varies from canvas to canvas, as with a flickering eye from the carriage. From one exalted railway line, we find the sky made still while all else blurs in transit, from another we can sense that peculiar rotating vista of a far off centre, while one seems to resist movement altogether, foregrounding the subject and diminishing the stability of viewpoint entirely.

With all these paintings, there is a sense of history and layering, of a now well-established infrastructure that changed the face of the entire world, and how that past and present has been thread upon the ground in this monument of history. Colonial Street in particular creates a wonderful layering of urban cultures, in a painting that juxtaposes rail platform graffiti with pristine industrial park office blocks. Between the darkened, almost subterranean nature of the graffiti and the artificially landscaped floating blocks of contemporary architecture, you get the sense of a culture more and more fragmented and condemned to isolation, existing in discrete microcosms and with little hope of eventual cohesion. The railway line, at once here and nowhere, cuts through them diagonally, underlining their detachment but at the same time harkening to the impulses of modernization that have brought us here.

As always, the Rubicon remains a peaceful little oasis in the city centre, mere yards away from the seasonal frenzy of Grafton St. Those interested can enjoy Teskey’s work until December 11th, but please don’t piss in the stairwell. It’s not funny, it’s not clever, and it certainly isn’t art.

Donald Teskey ‘Loops and Sidings’, runs at the Rubicon Gallery, Stephen’s Green, until 11^th December 2009. (This Review appeared on the Totally Dublin website, November 09, Words:Padraig Moran (c) 2009)

So this is (extremely) late, but I figure it’s still worth blogging about. So here it goes:

In late October my fellow exchange students and I ventured to Delhi for a week-long youth conference at the Om Shanti Resort. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see much of Delhi (other than the Akshardham Temple), but we instead spent the week exploring the spiritual side of India.

We arrived in Delhi via A/C sleeper train, which is quite an experience, once you get used to the cockroaches and playing a never-ending one-lane version of Frogger in the aisle. Being on the train is always pretty fun though, because if there’s one thing we exchange students are good at, it’s enjoying each others’ company.

About ten thousand games of Egyptian Rat Screw and Bullshit later, we arrived at the resort in Delhi.

View from our hotel room. Not too shabby.

Immediately afterward we were subjected to several days of spiritual lectures which were, for the most part, horribly boring, elementary, and redundant, to be truthful. A few of us managed to wake up for early morning meditation at 4 AM, but aside from that, there wasn’t much variety.

Chilling in lecture, before the boredom set in.

The people in white are called the Brahma Kumaris, our spiritual advisors. They have Brahma Kumari centers set up all across the world. As pointed out below:

We were  given a tour of the entire resort. Including their awesome roof:

A pyramid for meditation:

And the grounds:

Also, there was a very creepy spiritual art gallery, of which I still have nightmares.

Even though the whole experience was kind of disappointing, and we saw nothing of Delhi, it was still a really great opportunity to meet and connect with other people and make new friends:

We also gave a really cool inbound talent show, which featured the following:

Will and I sharing our American culture by performing two songs, “Anyone Else But You” by the Moldy Peaches and “Hotel Yorba” by the White Stripes.

Our rendition of two Bollywood songs (“Pretty Woman” and “Kal Ho Na Ho”) taught to us by our new friends. In return, they performed a German song that we taught them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3FG4EOgyU

^ Life doesn’t get any better than that.

We also performed “La Bamba” as a whole group. It’s become our unofficial inbound theme song.

The RYLA was wrapped up with a sightseeing trip to the Akshardham Temple. Which was kind of like an educational Disneyland for Hindus. It was absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately photos were forbidden within the temple.

A lovely group picture (:

I spent the weekend after the RYLA at Almitra’s house. We went to see a play in Nariman Point – at the National Centre for Performing Arts – Life, Love, and Other Madness. It was nice to see an authentic Indian play for once, especially one that dealt with the changing face of relationships in modern India, which is super interesting. The best thing about the weekend though was just being around Almitra and her family – Almitra’s definitely my best friend here. Even if we’re just being lazy or Almitra spends the day studying, we always have fun, and I learn so much from her and her family.

 I’m starting to miss my friends from home a lot more here, but the relationships I’ve made here are what keep me going.

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis

There’s a bookshop in my neighborhood that’s always a treat to visit, for in its basement exists a magical world of model trains. The owner has put out a large railway set where a network of tracks winds through an Alpine setting. You can’t help but marvel at the ingenuity of it all: the shiny trains that dart about like wild salmon, the tracks that switch with metronomic precision, the dainty stations and the painted smiles on the plastic figures that wave as the carriages whiz by. It’s idyllic.

Above ground, you come crashing back to reality. These days, a ride on the ISAP electric railway that runs from Kifissia to Piraeus will confirm that your childhood dreams of speeding trains, spotless stations, clockwork punctuality and happy passengers were just that: dreams.

This week represented a new low in the long history of ISAP, as thousands of customers were shocked to discover there was no service between Neo Faliro and Tavros for the next three weeks. ISAP, which is used by some 580,000 passengers a day, had announced the closure but in the manner that embarrassed parents reveal their child has been left behind a year at school. So, few commuters knew they had to use a replacement bus service that added at least half an hour to their journey.

Predictably, chaos ensued. After swarming out of Tavros station like refugees fleeing a ransacked village, passengers squeezed onto a bus that smelled like it had been marinated in aviation fuel and which chugged its way through congested streets. Ironically, part of the reason the 110-million-euro upgrade of the ISAP track is taking place is to increase safety as well as reduce travelling time. But should the driver of one of these packed replacement buses have to slam on the breaks, then osteoporosis-ravaged grannies will snap like twigs and pot-bellied men will fly through the air like human cannonballs.

During the half-hour journey, not many people spoke but you could hear their thoughts. The overriding one was that public transport was not worth the hassle any more. Repeated attempts to convince more than four in 10 Athenians to use the public transport network were being undone by ISAP’s apathy. It’s a basic rule of public transport that commuters will put up with delays or deviations as long as they are kept adequately informed.

However, even the basics are beyond ISAP’s grasp at the moment. Air conditioning, for instance, has not been fitted in all the carriages – a project supposed to have been finished for the 2004 Olympics. So, in the summer they soak up the sun and passengers swelter like Steve McQueen confined to a tin hut as punishment in the “The Great Escape.”

This year, the line from Kifissia to Piraeus has been more of a construction site rather than a railway, as engineers undertake the interminable task of replacing the track. The railway began running in 1869, so the upgrade may well be a necessary project. But the way it’s being managed has completely disrupted a very simple, basic form of public transport that used to work pretty well, albeit with some issues such as cleanliness and security, which have never been adequately tackled. If planning and respect for the customer were a priority, this project would be carried out only at non-peak hours and with engineers working double-time.

Apparently, those at ISAP fail to realize that when people pay to use a service, you have to give them one that’s worth paying for. If they need any confirmation they are selling passengers short, they only have to consider that it costs exactly the same (1 euro) to travel on ISAP as it does to use the metro. Clearly, the two services do not compare and one wonders whether the way they are structured has anything to do with it. ISAP is a public company, an extension of the frappe-swilling, chain-smoking, civil service, whereas the metro is operated by AMEL, which is run as a private company – albeit under the auspices of the Transport Ministry, now part of the Infrastructure Ministry.

However, privatizing ISAP may not necessarily be the answer. There is a school of thought that public transport, the piston that drives the engine of the national economy by getting people to where they need to be every day, is too strategic a sector to end up in private hands. Germany, for instance, has been trying to part-privatize its state-owned railway Deutsche Bahn, the equivalent of the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE) in Greece, for several years but the scheme has foundered on political and union opposition. CEO Hartmut Mehdorn was forced to resign earlier this year after failing to get the project rolling.

The privatization of British Rail also serves as an example of the pitfalls of selling off the railways. The franchising in Britain, which began in 1994, led to higher prices, increased delays, reduced safety and more disgruntled customers – there are some 500,000 passenger complaints every year.

As unpalatable as these cases make rail privatization sound, Greece will not be able to ignore the idea because the European Parliament and Council have agreed that international passenger services will be liberalized as of January 1 next year. The European Commission has also committed to examining over the next two years whether domestic services should be liberalized as well.

Of course, this affects OSE, which has debts of some 8 billion euros, more immediately than the Kifissia-Piraeus railway. But given the economic necessity of reducing the public sector, the government cannot put off a decision about the future of ISAP for too long, especially when the quality of its service has become so poor.

Perhaps PASOK will look to the Athens metro model, where private sector rules apply to the line’s operations but the government can still exercise influence when it needs to. While politicians sort that one out, all passengers can do is dream of the model railway of their childhoods and cry out to the person in charge: Please sir, can you fix my train set?

This commentary was written by Nick Malkoutzis and first appeared in Athens Plus on November 27, 2009.

It is time to accept this week as a dull some and do not talk about it anymore.

I was suffering from cough and cold since the storm and wanted some medicine for it. I went to the nearest pharmacy yesterday morning and in very clear words asked for syrup without any side effects such as drowsiness etc. The store fellow assured me for that and gave me a medicine which I took as first thing at office. Till lunch time I was almost asleep at my desk. After that, I moved home for a quick nap with a promise to return in a couple of hours.

It was 9 in the evening when I wake up. I was asleep for almost 7 hours. Next thing I did, had my dinner, another dose of that drug and again, I slept till 8 this morning.

My head was buzzing all day long and in the noon time I went to the pharmacy and complained about the situation, he just said sorry and that was it.

Ashu is coming tonight for his interview at my company and tomorrow we will leave together to Indore. He does not have any reservation as for now and we have to share the return seats after all.

By the looks of it, I am having a very busy calendar ahead. It is Ashu coming late tonight, and then tomorrow’s travel and then Kunal’s post wedding attendance, then move to Sanawad for Amit Jain’s wedding celebrations, on Sunday its Dhamnod where the wedding will take place. I will be going to visit Aarti at her hostel and may be to see Priyank’s kid.

On my return journey to Vadodara, Brijesh will be coming with me as he has got appointment as a fresher in my company.

Before things settle down, again I’ll be moving to Indore to take Priyanka with me to Vadodara for the house as the week will be gone in checking up if everything is all right.

Phew!

Post 27/30.

I missed the train this morning. The 20 minute drive to the train station is usually fraught as imagine the train chugging out of the station before we get there, but it never actually happens. This time, the train was pulling out as we arrived.

So the chase was on to the next station about 20kms away. Turns out the train has a more direct route to the next town and doesn’t get stuck behind road works vehicles.

The consolation coffee on Lake Nagambie was nice though.

Train photo from Weekly Times

Lake photo from Centretown Motel Nagambie