The First Trainspotter

The BBC reports that a new exhibit at the British National Railway Museum has documents from the first known Trainspotter. The museum is showing a letter written by 14-year old John Backhouse of County Durham to his sister in 1825 that describes a steam locomotive.

It was a very grand sight to see such a mass of people moving on the road from Stockton to Darlington, 600 people were said to be in, on and about the wagons and coaches! And the engine drew not less that 90 tons!!!!!

There was an excellent dinner prepared at Stockton for the railway gentry. I could tell you a great many more particulars but suppose that you are tired of it by this time.

Trainspotting saw it's heyday in the 1930s and steady decline since the 1960s when rail was superseded as the dominant mode for transporting goods and people.

Wired's Best & Worst Airport to Rail Connections

Alexander Lew compiled lists of the best and worst cities for airport to rail connections. The five best:
5. Chicago O'Hare for its connection to the Blue Line
4. Tokyo's Narita airport connections to its Narita Express and Keisei Skyliner trains.
3. London's Heathrow airport's BAA Heathrow Express.
2. Paris Charles de Gaulle's connections to the TGV.
1. And the most convenient is Hong Kong's Airport Express.

Unfortunate travelers may find themselves having to rely on public transportation at the following airports:
4. New York's JFK
3. Shanghai Pudong PVG
2. San Francisco SFO
1. Los Angeles LAX

From Beijing to Lhasa by rail

The controversial new railroad between Beijing and Lhasa, capital of Tibet, travels over some of the highest terrain in the world. At over 16,000 feet the oxygen content is just 45% of normal levels, and oxygen masks are supplied for passengers. John Flinn of the San Francisco Chronicle rode the train and filed an illustrated report in the November 5, 2006 Sunday issue.

More recently the New Yorker (April 16, 2007) published a longer article by Pankaj Mishra. It describes the author's train ride to Lhasa and ponders the political implications of the new rail link. An abstract is available.

French high speed train breaks record

Here's a report from CNN on the French TGV breaking its speed record in late March. It topped 564 kilometers (356.5 miles) per hour. Here also is a video of the event, shot inside the train, from the air and from a couple of stationary locations. The best moment comes when the train passes under a bridge; that's when you get a true impression of the vehicle's awesome speed.

Someday we may get the chance to whisk between the Bay Area and the Southland on one of these things.

More History of Container Shipping

The May issue of TRAINS Magazine has an article about White Pass & Yukon Route. The article has a small section about narrow-gauge container trains and the world's first container ship, White Pass & Yukon's 4,000 ton Clifford J. Rogers which predates Malcom McLean's Ideal-X by a year.

50 years of Container Shipping

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of container shipping.

Fifty years ago April 26, a trucker from rural North Carolina ran an experiment here that forever altered international trade and the global economy.

While many scoffed, Malcolm McLean hired a crane to hoist 58 trailer-sized steel cargo boxes onto a Texas-bound freighter. It was an alternative to the then-ubiquitous "break-bulk" shipping, the costly, pilferage-prone method dramatized in the film "On the Waterfront."
...
Now, shipping everything from clothing to razor blades to electronics in secured metal containers is the norm. Breakage and theft have been dramatically curtailed, and average shipping costs have fallen from 15% of retail value to less than 1%. At the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's facilities in Newark, N.J. and Elizabeth, N.J., containerization accounts for 94% of the cargo, with break bulk about 1%; automobiles account for the remainder.