Category: Overseas

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.

Nonetheless, this is what happened when a Metro train overran its buffer stop and came to rest on the tail of the whale.

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.