The Associated Press covers the debut of Taiwan’s high-speed rail service, including some of the technical glitches involved in ticket purchases; The New York Times provides background on the project’s long and controversial history: But the system’s enormous cost — $15 billion, or $650 for every man, woman and child on Taiwan — has made [...]
The Beeching Axe refers to the 1963 Beeching Report, which recommended the closure of a number of rail services in the UK. In the wake of the report, branch lines were abandoned; for the most part, rail service retreated to trunk lines. (To a certain extent, the Beeching Axe resembles later retrenchments by Amtrak and [...]
Train fares have gone up in Britain: regulated fares by 4.3 per cent, some unregulated fares by even more. Either way, it’s more than the annual rate of inflation, and that’s the fourth year that has been the case. Critics are charging that the fare increases are in response to increased traffic (instead of adding [...]
A German ICE (Inter-City Express) leaves Berlin in the snow; this photo was apparently taken about a year ago. Photo by JoJo4Art.
Travel blog Gadling has a post about the Eurostar’s move to St. Pancras Station next year but, mystifyingly, links to a two-year-old press release about it. A more recent press release fixes November 14, 2007 as the date when Eurostar will move its London terminal from Waterloo to St. Pancras. The move will mean dedicated [...]
Speaking of Japanese prototypes undergoing testing. Road-rail vehicles are usually trucks adapted for maintenance of way purposes, but JR Hokkaido is testing a dual-mode passenger unit — essentially, a bus/RDC hybrid that can operate on both rails and roads. The idea, as was the case with diesel rail cars in the mid 20th century, is [...]
Though it’s been in testing since the spring of last year, and there are photos of it on Flickr (see, for example, hiziri‘s photo at right), the N700-series Shinkansen — the main feature of which is that it adds tilting technology so that it can maintain higher speeds on tighter curves — made its press [...]
A long, seven-page article on high-speed rail in Spain, which network is called AVE, from a special advertising section in MIT’s Technology Review. A good read, but technical. High-speed rail had more than its fair share of challenges in that country: Spain’s national rail network, RENFE, was dilapidated compared with other countries, and it was [...]
The Northeast Corridor — the largely Amtrak-owned stretch of track from Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Washington, DC that also sees heavy use by commuter rail services — is too crucial an asset to be left in Amtrak’s hands. That, at least, is my impression of the conclusions of the Northeast Corridor Action [...]
A Thalys — essentially a TGV for Belgium and the Netherlands — passes at speed. Photo by Patricks Pics.
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