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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Station Views Quiz 23rd Dec 20
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on: December 26, 2020, 17:40:16
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Is that the new car park on the north side of the line in the background? No that is the Lorry park for the Tarmac plant at the west end of the Tarmac plant. The Car park will be at the East end of the Tarmac plant and the station. Is the plan to access it from the east - i.e. off the roundabout on the A44?
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Le Quiz d'Avent - jour 23, 21 Dec 2020
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on: December 21, 2020, 22:36:36
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A pedant writes: 3 is indeed an SNCF▸ mainline station, but it isn?t in France. Monaco.
That's right - though pedantically speaking it's Monaco-Monte-Carlo. Its marginal unFrenchness is covered by my carefully-worded let-out about some not meeting that definition. I can't think of any similar station in a tunnel, though some are underground (or under a station building). It's said they rebuilt the line in tunnel to free up valuable land for building very expensive flats on (there being no other kind in Monaco). But hardly any of the line was open to the sky before that, so it must have been more a case of building blocks of flats with underground car parks (and swimming pools?) rather than without. Most of the workers in Monaco live in Nice, and with tourists as well the railway link gets very busy. My mid-morning train from Nice was full and standing tidily only, and left half an hour late. By then the next train was due to leave, and on checking the SNCF online compensation system I found my train had been renumbered as that second train. So it was on time - and the earlier one was cancelled, but fortunately had no passengers! I wasn't impressed. The crowd pictured didn't all fit on the train when it arrived - and it was a 12-car of double-deckers. I trusted the CIS▸ and got a more inhabitalble one ten minutes later. This line has one of the worst performance records in France. SNCF have been having a long-running "difference of views" with the region (PACA), currently subject to a kind of truce. That's all happening across France, but this is PACA* - and the region has been having a long bout of arm-wrestling with SNCF over the cost and performance of their services. They threatened an open competition, but in the end found a legal process that let them requisition SNCF in some way rather than negotiating a contract. I've no idea how that works, but after three years they have a new agreement. We went on that line when we spent a long weekend in Menton a few years ago, flying to Nice. And very pleasant too. The views are lovely - except in Monaco. The tunnel section was built in two stages, and certainly freed up some land. Wiki has an explanation and a map.
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: Le Quiz d'Avent - jour 23, 21 Dec 2020
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on: December 21, 2020, 21:44:30
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Here are a few (not too helpful at this early stage) hints:
2. taken in 2013 4. sauce for the Rosbif? 5. had to be rebuilt after 1945 7. you can only see two or three locks, but ? 12. rebuilt station opened last month two, I know, are places a lot of people have driven through - or perhaps more likely past. And these are all recent - no older than 2012 - so may have been mentioned on the forum.
3, as I said is a main line station - here's a picture to prove it (for those who are logged on and can see it):
A pedant writes: 3 is indeed an SNCF▸ mainline station, but it isn?t in France. Monaco.
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All across the Great Western territory / Looking forward - the next 5, 10 and 20 years / Re: Network Rail draws up list of 'no regret' electrification schemes
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on: December 18, 2020, 21:10:02
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Dear Sirs, I?m not familiar with this newfangled use of the expression ?no regret?. When did this become usual? Yours sincerely, A Pensioner That is a very good question, and I am glad you asked. When you think outside the box, it's a no-brainer. Having peeled the onion utilizing a desk-based coalface analysis (leveraging available technologies), I was enabled to climb the strategic staircase and look under the bonnet to visualize a helicopter view of the phrastic intent of 'no regret'. It means 'low-hanging fruit'. You may well, be right, but I still think you should have run it up flagpole to see who salutes.
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: 3.12.2020 - Some old timetables, but where for and just how old.
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on: December 04, 2020, 11:20:25
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Really amazed that I can take a random, interesting-looking page from an obscure overseas publication that a vendor was offloading cheap, strip out all the key words and have a member identify it exactly. Truly we have some impressive members here.
<blush> I think I might have been struggling if you hadn?t left the word ?City? in ?Kansas City?. The thought process was that (i) it couldn?t involve the Rockies - because the speeds are quite high (ii) the Washington-NY-Boston route was out because the frequency wasn?t enough and you wouldn?t really call that eastbound and westbound (iii) so the speeds, orientation, and distances indicated the plains - for which the natural starting point was Chicago Union. Then there are not that many ?Cities? and the distance to Kansas City looked about right. I?m in full Amtrak mode at present, and as a gesture of confidence have re-booked my New York-Chicago-San Francisco run (Lake Shore Limited/California Zephyr) for next October - it should have been this year.
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Sideshoots - associated subjects / The Lighter Side / Re: 3.12.2020 - Some old timetables, but where for and just how old.
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on: December 04, 2020, 00:04:51
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I'm going to have a very wild guess that 6 is somewhere in the USA.
No. 6, Shipping lines had timetables like that with fixed places and return times reading bottom up. 1930s my guess.
I think No. 7 is from North America and quite recently. The wording 'Rail Station' is not East Atlantic English and I swear I read the word 'Transit' on the page behind - in reverse of course. Was it 2018 you and your good lady took the cruise?
No. 6 is indeed in the USA. My wife and I did indeed take a cruise to that country last autumn, but the timetable 'sampled' was purchased in Birmingham (England) the previous spring. Much more recent than the 1930s. I think 6 is the Chicago Burlington & Quincy between Chicago and Kansas City. Trains 35/36 and 55/56 are the Kansas City Zephyr and the American Royal Zephyr respectively. Presumably the era is immediately before Amtrak, so 1960s?
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