kaptrice 🐦‍⬛

kaptrice.blogspot.comThe Fushun Electric Railway - China's First Electric RailwayChina is not a country well-known for legacy suburban railways. Although lately several dozen new-build lines have appeared, and several mai...

18 Nov 2025

For decades, China's only electrified suburban railway was a 300km-system in Fushun, an industrial city of a little over a million in Liaoning province. I wrote a little about it: kaptrice.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

cbc.caAlto high-speed rail project could cost up to $113B, budget watchdog says | CBC NewsBuilding the proposed high‑speed rail project between Toronto and Quebec City could cost between $75 billion and $113 billion — higher than some of the official initial estimates, according to a new r...

The PBO's cost estimate is the result of a weekend spent playing around with the Transit Costs Project spreadsheet and some typesetting. There is ~0 special insight and treating it as authoritative is silly

Alex Freeman@northernnerd.bsky.social

😐 YOU DON'T SAY.

The two authors of this report are lifelong economists with likely no great subject matter expertise on the topic. Don't take something seriously because it has a government office's stamp on it.

like Come On Man

Gyeongui-Jungang commuter trains, ITX-Cheongchung, and KTX-Eum trains share the double tracks. It's fun seeing them side by side.

*meant to mention - this is the Gyeongwon line between Seoul and Cheongnyangni stations, at Eungbong station

Somehow, high-speed trains feel really huge when they operate on ordinary trackage.

19 Sept

Gyeongbu line and Gyeongbu HSL racing out of the platforms at Daejeon

18 Sept

18 Sept

10 Sept

have you ever wanted a technical treatise on design of urban railways in the south korea context? i haven't either, but now i'm interested

@macsquirelera.bsky.social

6 Sept

Six tracks of Hangang bridge at the end of summer

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

Mac the squirrel :)

12 Aug

Canada, unlike the US doesn’t have infinite money to waste so you’d think someone would care to do some cost control on projects but alas

Toronto Star@thestar.com

#Breaking: The Ontario Line cost surges to $34B from an initial $10.9B estimate

thestar.comDoug Ford said the Ontario Line would cost $11B. Years later, the price tag has tripledThe 15.6 kilometre line, which will run from Exhibition to the Don Valley, has seen its budget triple since it was announced in 2019.

@jacktatttran.bsky.social

29 July

otrain !! thank you otrain

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

JackTatt 🇨🇦

16 July

Exciting news: TTC has awarded a contract to Hitachi for its SelTrac communications based train control (CBTC) on line 2 (according to the announcement, including on Metrolinx’s Scarborough Subway Extension). This will enable reliability, speed, and frequency improvements. @ttcriders.bsky.social

ttc.caTTC awards contract for Line 2 signalling upgrade to support more frequent and reliable service

Steve Munro@swanboatsteve.bsky.social

The TTC selects Hitachi as supplier of Automatic Train Control on Line 2, but the benefits are a decade away. stevemunro.ca/2026/07/15/t...

2 June

Q1 2026 USCA commuter rail ridership update: - RTO policy is bringing up ridership overall - Caltrain electrification has grown ridership 70% - Only GO has exceeded prepandemic numbers; ridership grew 8.5% while local transit ridership fell ~5%

2 June

In absolute numbers the difference in ridership recovery between the LIRR and BART is really starkly visible

@albertonykus.bsky.social

29 May

It's been a couple years but I want to start writing Wikipedia pages for the London Clay birds again

Alberta Claw@albertonykus.bsky.social

Review of Eocene birds from the Walton Member of the London Clay Formation in England: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Mayr)

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

Alberta Claw

29 May

Review of Eocene birds from the Walton Member of the London Clay Formation in England: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Mayr)

Beside the viaduct carrying the Harbin-Qiqihar HSL and Harbin-Manzhouli railway through central Harbin there's a commemorative hall for the China Eastern Railway. The railway defines Northeast China the way the way the CPR does Western Canada and almost single-handedly drove its settlement.

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In 1952 the Chinese Changchun Railway, last of the European concessions, was returned to Chinese ownership by the Soviet Union, along with dozens of mines and industrial facilities, the ports of Dalian and Lushun, and associated property. Northeast China then became a core part of China.

But in the 50 years prior there had been many competing visions, advocated in large part by the railway companies that controlled the region. The CER's backers envisioned a Russified colony, the SMR and Kwantung Army an internationalised, Japan-controlled synthetic state.

The nearby Harbin Railway Museum, a former social hall for the CER and later Mantetsu elite, commemorates the legacy of the region's historical railways - the CER in its joint-imperial as well as Soviet-Republican incarnations, the MNR, SMR, as well as the Chinese indigenous railways.

22 May

For Canada I feel this is Montreal because the REM took the tunnel and the second tunnel will almost certainly be filled with high-speed intercities. Maybe connecting Mont St Hilaire to Lucien L'Allier but that also is a new bridge/tunnel.

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20 May

winter was not very long ago

20 May

13 May

i got the book. more fushun electric railway knowledge is Coming

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛@kaptrice.bsky.social

7 May

sitting down to dinner to be served with the mantetsu plates

28 Apr

Changchun-Harbin(?) express passing through Shuangchengpu station

8 Mar

Thinking about Toronto's trains: every delivery to Davisville or Greenwood (i.e. every train from 1954 to 2001) was by rail, but the TRs, which arrived at Wilson, weren't. Streetcars have always arrived by rail to Hillcrest, and Line 5 LRVs by rail to EMSF.

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8 Mar

The NSTs recently ordered will probably arrive by rail to Greenwood and in the future when the Obico yard is built that will also be able to take deliveries.

reuters.comSouth Korea set to finally get a fully functioning Google MapsSouth Korea will soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps doesn't work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-...

28 Feb

Finally Korea will get high-quality Google Maps. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Mac the squirrel :)@macsquirelera.bsky.social

Korea doesn’t show up on western mapping apps, and it doesn’t have the sheer size of China

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

Bjorn

@zmapper.bsky.social

@jacktatttran.bsky.social

This, continual procurement, is the one reform to US federal vehicle procurement I want. We need structures that allow continual fleet renewal at 1/x lifespan, not bulk purchases every 30 years that inherently have big issues.

donoteat@donoteat.bsky.social

honestly i think we just have to embrace some diseconomies and order 15-20 cars at a time for several years as amtrak slowly expands the system

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

JackTatt 🇨🇦

My research article “Quantitative Method for Assessing the Quality of Intermodal/Interagency Connections and Service Integration at Suburban Rail Stations” has been published in the @trb.org Transportation Research Record. This is based on my MASc @uoft.me on coordination between transit services.

How is commuter rail in the US and Canada faring? It depends! In terms of ridership recovery, Toronto, Boston, and the LIRR lead, while Chicago and Los Angeles lag far behind. Caltrain modernisation has brought the system far ahead of it's region's metro, BART.

North American commuter rail ridership through 2025 shows a couple of upwards trends: -LIRR benefitting from expanded City Ticket, congestion pricing, ESA. -GO improved off peak service. -Caltrain reinvigoration

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

Stephen Jacob Smith

@stephenjacobsmith.com

25 Feb

The discussion about "modular" construction would be a lot more lucid if we viewed it as an extreme on the prefabrication spectrum. There's lots of prefab already viable (like this!) – and we can make it more viable!

Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app

Some Kitchener-Waterloo content for the precast construction enjoyers @kaptrice.bsky.social @stephenjacobsmith.com

@artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social

23 Feb

waiting so diligently for the analyst at APTA to upload the q4 ridership report so i can know how canadian systems are holding up

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ reposted

ArtButMakeItSports

22 Feb

Suprematism, by Nikolai Suetin, 1920-21, 📸 by @tiltoncreative

22 Feb

And before the wars, Korea strangely functioned as an agri-colony of Japan, where much of the rice crop was exported for Japanese consumption and the lost calories substituted with Manchurian coarse grain imports.

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22 Feb

Heilongjiang and Jilin are now chief rice producers but their Chinese settlers mostly did not practice rice farming. North Koreans were settled by the Japanese government in collective farms to introduce rice, and supposed friction against them was a proximate cause of the Manchurian Incident.