InsideTransit

Ok picture this… a man is removed from a train for not holding a valid ticket. Most people would purchase a ticket and be on their way. Not this guy! He takes his pants down and moons the transit staff.  He’s thinking “hah I showed them!”

Only one problem… when the doors closed, his pants were caught in the doors and as the train started to move, he was dragged along the platform with his pants down around his ankles. A passenger pulled the emergency brake which probably saved the man’s life.

From Reuters, “The man — unharmed except for cuts and bruises — now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.”

“He was full of remorse when I talked to him,” the spokesman said. “And he advised others not to try the same thing.”

What’s the lesson we learned from this? Don’t moon the transit staff!

This story out of Hamburg, Germany is pretty darn exciting. It appears that, “Siemens and the German Rail want to get together in the U.S. railroad business.” Spiegel Online is reporting (translated link) that since the U.S. wants more rail from cities including Orlando to Miami, the German collaboration wants a piece of the action.

German rail isn’t with its own problems – there have been lots of talk about axle and rail issues as of late. The one thing I noticed when riding the rails in Europe was that the trains were always on time or very, very close. Here you are lucky if the train just shows up

I’ve been on ICE a few times and can tell you that it was so much sweeter than AMTRAK can ever hope to be. Even if the routes (which will sadly never be built anyway) are U.S. made, I hope they allow the best of rail from across the world to influence both the design and the technology.

Yesterday we looked at a pretty neat postcard-to-model subway train. Now we have a paper model you can print and create at home.  The available models include:

• TGV PSE (Paris Sud-Est) original orange version
• TGV PSE (Paris Sud-Est) blue Ligne de Coeur version
• TGV La Poste
• TGV Atlantique
• TGV Thalys
• TGV Duplex
• AVE / Euromed (Spanish TGV)
• KTX (Korean TGV)
• Speedrail (Australian TGV)
• Acela Express (USA)
• Undecorated TGV

It looks like you need just some basic supplies (and some thick paper) to create the various trains. Pretty neat craft project!

If you are a railfan, you’ve most certainly heard of BVE. BVE is a train simulator that freaking rocks (I wish it worked on Vista!) which allows you to “drive” train routes from around the world that developers have created.

Now I’ve come across a site which is a different kind of simulator – this time it’s a schedule simulator. You pick a city system from the following: LIRR, SEPTA, Chicago Metra, WMATA and MBTA. Then just sit back and watch the full map for the system and you see dots on the map move as the schedule moves. What’s really amazing is to watch the activity at rush hour.

Maybe, just maybe, riders will have a bit more respect for just the sheer number of trains that pass through the system on a given day. It only takes a minute to watch the whole day so give the simulator a try.

Found via German railfan Till, here’s a link to an excellent photoblog from Germany. The text is in German but you can navigate and view all of the photos. I love the angle of all of the photos – this guy takes time to create awesome photographs.

Here’s the latest photo: