InsideTransit

There’s Miss USA, Mrs. USA, Miss World and about 80,000 other beauty pageants each year across the world. But none are as cool as this one. German newspaper The Local is reporting that there will be a beauty pageant held in the Berlin U-Bahn.

The event will feature the same competitions as a normal pageant: swimwear, evening gown, talent and Q&A. From what we hear, there will also be a competition to see which contestant can stop the U7 bahn closest to an egg placed at the end of the station.

It looks like each contestant will be paired with a German fashion designer and the idea is to show off the designer’s clothing and also the bahn. Nothing better than an attractive woman coming together with an attractive subway car.

The winner wins a lifetime free pass on any German rail system (just kidding).

I can only imagine what 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Farenheit) trapped in a train must feel like. The German ICE train was headed from Berlin to Cologne on one of the hottest weekends of the year. My friends in Germany have told me about the massive heatwave Germany was under last week. ICE is Germany’s high speed train and if I remember from my trips on ICE several years ago, you couldn’t open the windows.

From The Local, “Nine students and elderly passengers were taken to the hospital, where some received IV drips. The student group from Remscheid and Willich in North Rhine-Westphalia had been on its way back from a class trip to Berlin.

Witnesses described dramatic scenes on board the ICE train as dehydrated students reportedly lay down in the aisles, and one woman smashed a window during the trip in hopes of getting fresh air.”

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: