Per RTE, the original footbridge which inspired A. A. Milne to include the concept of Poohsticks in his Winnie the Pooh books, is up for sale by auction.
The bridge was located in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex and was dismantled and put in storage, due to having been worn down by visitors, with a replacement bridge installed.
The auction takes place on October 5th with an expected sale price of £40-60k.
Spain has the Caminito Del Rey, Switzerland has the Torrent Neuf.
The latter is a 15th Century, suspended water leat system which was used to divert water from glaciers to otherwise dry valleys. Per the BBC, some 200 such systems spanning 1,800km in length still operate. One such systems is the Torrent Neuf. Initially put out of service in 1935, it was restored in 2013 as a tourist attraction.
Not in Ireland (but I am genuinely surprised that CIE haven’t tried this as an excuse).
Thankfully, the local council have stepped in and demanded that they apply for retrospective planning permission (I hope that this is to allow the council to refuse such permission).
The BBC reports on a re-activated proposal (first floated in 2012) to turn 400m of disused railway viaduct in Manchester into a High Line style park on a temporary basis.
The BBC have an article about John Hume (not he of Northern Ireland’s SDLP fame) and his contribution to the recording of Scotland’s industrial heritage.
The BBC reports that an alcoholic drink made from apples grown in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has been seized by Ukranian authorities before it could be exported to the UK.
Notwithstanding its origin, the manufacturers claim that it is “no more radioactive than any other vodka”.
As a teetotaler, I won’t be partaking of this new product but wish its producers well.
I’m sure when the relevant authorities commissioned and installed an art work in Spijkenisse in The Netherlands, the sculpture (of a whale) playing a part in railway safety wasn’t part of the consideration.
The BBC have an interesting article about “how dams have reshaped our planet“.
a coup, or something else, or so one engineer (train driver) in the US thought.
To react to this “coup”, he ran his locomotive off the end of the line in some sort of attempt to attack the USNS Mercy in the Port of Los Angeles.
No, I haven’t lost it, nor has Willy Wonka materialised in real life (although given the strange environment we are in currently, all bets are off!).
If, at some point in the future, our overlords deign to allow us out of our prisons, sorry, houses, and to travel overseas again, there is, in Genoa, Italy, an innovative combination of railway and lift in use for passengers, details of which can be found here.
The concept is not exactly rocket science – mine shafts would have used a similar concept to load coal/ore in railway wagons into a lift with rails therein, hoisted them to surface and run the wagons off onto another railway.