I went on a short trip to York Pennsylvania today, and saw the most minuscule steam locomotive. It’s so tiny, I imagine the small cupboard above the boiler on the rear is actually the tender.
Oh, and what it looked like at the time in yellow on the right, but the original original actual for realsies Stephenson’s Rocket on the left.
Fun fact, the large gaps in windows in the middle of the train are where the extra traction motors and brake equipment are, in addition to the ones immediately behind the cabs at each end.
I largely agree with his assessment, except about the sound. Rubber tired metros are not quieter, they’re a different type of loud. The trains moving along with a dull roar like a highway or even airplane.
That, and I don’t think the traction is actually a factor either, as the Mexico City Metro has 10mph slow orders on outdoor track when it rains, and I have personally been on at least three adhesion rail lines that are steeper than any rubber tired metro. At worst, you just make like Lyon and have a half-rack, half-adhesion railway metro line.
Yup, that was probably an 8000 calorie gulp of apple molasses.
Double the pedestrianization! Twice as many streateries per frontage! What? It’s ADA inaccessible and the rest of the city looks like suburban New Jersey? I can’t hear you over this double dose of pedestrian supremacy in the core!
Even though this is probably obvious to regular riders, it’s a neat to see all the liveries clarified like this to help prevent people getting on the wrong train.
I swear I didn’t intend to visit. I had already done my Jet Lag pilgrimage in Edinburgh, and I wanted to explore Glasgow (obviously including riding the clockwork orange, the third-oldest subway on earth and the only subway in all of history to never be expanded since its opening day in 1897. It has comically tiny subway cars that you have to crouch to get into). However, there was some sort of event going on in Glasgow, so nearly every hotel was going for £400 a night. It was then that I realized I knew of a place to stay 1h45min south of Glasgow, a little village by the name of Dumfries.
After riding the Shoogle and lunching at Glasgow’s vegan lesbian coffee shop and bar (I love Scotland), I headed south (much more quickly, seeing as I wasn’t express-cursed). Just for fun, I put in a request to stay in the same room as Ben had, but at check in, the hotel and spa’s concierge said that the room he stayed in last year was booked, so they decided to upgrade me for free, rolling through the line so casually as if they get Jet Lag fanboys all the time making the request.
Dropping my stuff off, I spent two hours walking around Dumfries seeing the sights. I found the bush Ben hid behind, stopped in to the Greggs (right next to the Mark and Spencer’s) for a bake roll and a donut, and visited the Toys-R-Us for a Lego set (a gift for my sister. I bought 38 British model train magazines for myself).
The most fascinating thing about having done so many Jet Lag pilgrimages (I think this is my fifth in four countries) is that you can really easily reconstruct their reasoning just by seeing the territory in person. It’s exactly like General John Buford at Gettysburg; being on the ground, you can see plain as day how defensible the terrain is and how he set up the original battle lines to retreat into the highest ground.
In Jet Lag’s case, the place were they ended Season 16 was further away from town and the train station than Ben was, which confused me, but in walking along the road to Ben’s hiding spot, you see the bridge in the distance and can easily extrapolate a good view is just up the way. On the bridge itself, the exact position they chose for the trophy reveal is opposite a small memorial commemorating the municipal officials who advocated for the rail trail, a perfect place to mount a phone for filming.
Back in town, I wandered over to the island in the river for the picture of the largest body of water (which was harder to figure out the exact location because of how much the river had swollen with recent rain), and just by walking around there, I realized it was mere steps away from where Ben started episode 6, and also next to the bridge where he ended episode 6 (that exact spot was easier to tell because I could match the lichen pattern and curve of the wall). Most amazingly, I thought I was done with my explorations and started walking back to the hotel, to then stumble across the weird loop sculpture. No wonder Ben decided to film it because it was so easy to for him stumble upon, too, between the hotel and town.
It’s fun getting to go to these extremely obscure places and recreate a Jet Lag journey of my own. I guess this is what counts for tourism these days.
In barnstorming the subcontinent, I had no choice but to pay homage to the incredibly famous costar of Toby Hendy and pop into Nandos for a bite.
This marks four Jet Lag pilgrimages from as many seasons and in as many countries. Maybe I should make this a thing, do one location from each season…
As many may recall, for years now I’ve been on an inadvertent quest to bring the benefits of car-free urbanism and modern transit to model railroading (long story), and, for this, I recently bicycled the length of every Diesel Multiple Unit transit system in the US to gather prototype information and pictures (https://www.bgtmrring.org/dmu-systems). Since then, I’ve fled to Europe as a refugee, but my work is apparently not yet concluded.
For all the tangible benefits to operations that DMUs provide (not the least of which being that they bring frequent passenger trains to the same rails as prototypes for shelf switching layouts), the one unfortunately serious drawback is a lack of available models. While Piko offers a DCC-sound Sprinter Desiro (https://www.piko-america.com/products/52096-s-nctd-sprinter-4007-custom-sound-ho-scale), the more modern, more flexible, and much more common US-style Stadler FLIRT has yet to be manufactured.
However, I recently discovered that Hornby makes a fairly close facsimile in OO scale, Greater Anglia’s Basils (https://uk.hornby.com/products/greater-anglia-class-755-4-flirt-pride-livery-4-car-train-pack-r30446). Naturally, that left me no choice but to go subcontinents out of my way to a place I’d never been for the purpose of photographing another DMU as a paper-thin excuse to buy models I don’t need with money I don’t have for a layout that’s currently dismantled and sitting in storage on the other side of an ocean. So, you know, another perfectly average day in the life of u/astrog4, the ‘internet’s favorite schizo’ (https://www.bgtmrring.org/#testimonials-section).
The reason I’m so enthusiastic for the Hornby Basil is because it’s almost identical to the FLIRTs running in Fort Worth, Plano, Ottawa, San Bernardino, and soon to be Chicago (they’re the de facto modern standard of DMU in the US, so I imagine they will only continue to grow in prototype number). Furthermore, it has incredible detailing, comes in DCC and Sound, and is even pre-compatible with Bluetooth-app control options. Besides a slight pinching of the chassis to deal with the UK’s restrictive loading gauge and, obviously, the paint scheme, the only major difference is the lack of a nose cone for the scharfenberg, something which could easily be fixed with 3D printing or even the aggressive sanding of a wedge of lumber. Additionally, while I’m not certain, I think it would be fairly easy to buy the 3.5-car Hornby model and drop out the middle car to end up with the “two rooms and a bath” version of the FLIRT that’s presently running in San Bernardino and possibly other places in the future.
The only quirk is that it’s in OO scale, so it might look ever so slightly oversized compared to regular models, but remember that OO scale uses HO gauge track, the narrower British loading gauge means that the models should be equally as wide as HO scale ones, and the difference in scale figure height is literally just 3mm. Another, much smaller difference is that the Basils are actually hybrids and have a pantograph to use overhead power when in electrified territory. To model a pure DMU, it would be trivial to nip these off with an xacto knife, but I’d personally heave them on as it seems there’s going to be a revolution in battery trains any moment now, which are typically recharged by a short segment of overhead at stations.
The way I imagine this working is anybody wishing to model DMU operations (which, I’ll remind you, brings very frequent, completely prototypical passenger service to *shelf switching layouts*) could grab themselves a Hornby Basil (or Piko Sprinter) or two and use them as stand-in models for US prototypes (maybe even custom-paint them and add a nose cone, or, just, you know, proto-freelance it) until such a time as a manufacturer finally offers an actual model of a US Stadler FLIRT.
I’m thinking my next step on this journey is to catalog how the nitty-gritty of operations and the broader themes of layout design would be influenced by not just DMUs, but also other forms of modern transit. I have some ideas brewing for some podcast scripts…
Characteristically unhinged TLDR:
The gay agenda was actually to launch a war on cars as a way to put more rainbows on shelf layouts.
Years in the making, I’ve finally gotten around to making an episode about operations for my (old) podcast, the Beginner’s Guide to Model Railroading. If you love gargling a fire hose of explanations about CTC and TT&TO, or ever wondered what that 0.25x playback speed function of your podcatcher was for, this is the episode for you! Let me know what you all think!
I’m racking up quite the list of TSW routes visited IRL, including Providence to Boston, LAUPT to both Lancaster and San Bernardino, the Training Center, and now Peterborough to Doncaster. Next stop, Vorarlberg!
After having bicycled the length of every Diesel Multiple Unit transit system in the US, (https://www.bgtmrring.org/dmu-systems) I’ve been barnstorming Europe with reckless abandon as a refugee from the Fascist States of America.
Being a model railroader by trade, the one flaw of US DMUs is the shortage of models available from manufacturers, with really only one in production, Piko’s Sprinter Desiro (https://www.piko-america.com/products/52096-s-nctd-sprinter-4007-custom-sound-ho-scale), which NCTD had the discourtesy of changing the livery of attoseconds after I visited. Unfortunately, the more modern US-style FLIRTs have yet to be manufactured.
However, I recently discovered that Hornby makes a fairly close facsimile in OO scale, Greater Anglia’s Basils (https://uk.hornby.com/products/greater-anglia-class-755-4-flirt-pride-livery-4-car-train-pack-r30446). Naturally, that left me no choice but to go subcontinents out of my way to a place I’d never been for the purpose of photographing another DMU as a paper-thin excuse to buy models I don’t need with money I don’t have for a layout that’s currently demolished. So, you know, another perfectly average day in the life of u/astrog4, the ‘internet’s favorite schizo’ (https://www.bgtmrring.org/#testimonials-section).
While the urbanism of Cambridge is some of the most hostile I’ve seen anywhere on the planet (and I’ve visited 24 countries, all 50 US states, and 120 of the 150 largest cities in the US; Cambridge UK is walkable not because of itself, but in spite of itself, rant soon to follow), the Basils were not one of the many downsides. They’re smartly appointed, modern, and have glass-smooth running, an excellent core fleet for east Anglia’s tangential routes and so much better than the other DMUs, which sound like an unhealthy garbage truck gargling along.
Like in the US, the DMUs are 4.5-car trains, but, uniquely, also have 3.5-car asymmetrical variants. Very interestingly, the Basils are actually Hybrid Multiple Units, I guess I’ll coin them “HMUs”. In addition to having the middle Power Pack mini-car with diesel prime movers, the Power Pack is slightly larger and presumably contains bonus transformers to pair with a rooftop pantograph, allowing power by either diesel generators or overhead wire. Truly ingenious, and honestly dumbfounding that more systems don’t do this (*cough* MBTA *cough*).
Overall, it was worth the trip. It’s always nice to see such modern, functional, and aesthetic vehicles in service, as it inspires a strange and foreign emotion: hope for the world. I wish I had more time and a bicycle again to get more and better pictures. But, for now, off to Scotland!
I was within the same hemisphere as Brussels, so, naturally, I had to travel massively out of my way to visit its airport train station and assert that humans are animals. Possibly unpopular opinion, so long as it doesn’t happen too often and isn’t blatant cheating, I personally enjoy creative reinterpretation of the rules.
It took a while to narrow down which bench they sat at because the trash cans have been moved, but I was able to match it with the dented silver duct and grey paint patches in the background. The station was unexpectedly quite busy, so I never got a chance to sit in it, but I’m glad I got to visit.
This is my third Jet Lake pilgrimage on as many continents. First was the Auckland Sky Tower in New Zealand, then the Salem Capitol building in Oregon. Technically, I was also in Connellsville PA a mere two months before the boys passed through, though I failed to get any pharmacy popcorn. Brussels adds a third continent to the mix, so now I have absolutely no choice but to visit Singapore and Cancun.