lexande

25 July 2025

Travel threads I have posted: Antarctica-Boston without flying Nicosia-Lisbon without flying Boston-DC by local buses Berlin-Chisinau via Kyiv Austin-Quebec City without flying Berlin-Sicily by local/regional trains Berlin-Lagos without flying Berlin-Tromsø without flying

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

The other significant railway on the island is the Isle of Man Steam Railway, which runs four times a day in summer from Douglas to Port Erin.

27 May

But I'm not going to Port Erin today. The request stop at Ronaldsway Airport makes this the world's only steam-powered airport rail link. Here I'm transferring directly from a 1910-built steam train to an ATR-72 turboprop aircraft for the first leg of my flight home.

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

After spending a couple hours walking back down the hill to Laxey, I'm on the MER interurban again heading to Ramsey; I'll have dinner there and get the last departure back to Douglas at 21:40.

This is such a fun railway

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

On a clear day one can reportedly see England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland from up here, but it's definitely not clear enough today.

This was the last railcar to/from the summit today because the level crossing at Bungalow needs to close to make way for the motorcycle races happening around the northern part of the Isle of Man this week, but I was planning to walk back down anyway.

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

An hour later and the problem is reportedly fixed! (Or at least mitigated.) Let's try this again.

Successfully reached the summit after just a brief delay for sheep on the tracks.

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

The railcar stopped for the passengers to take photos of the Laxey water wheel, then asked if everyone was done with their photos before continuing

Somewhere near Agneash the railcar lost power due to a downed wire; eventually we were transferred across the tracks to a downward-bound tram back to Laxey

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

The interurban stops in Laxey where one can transfer to a *different* weird electric railway to the highest point in the Isle of Man, Snaefell Summit.

The Snaefell Mountain Railway uses ordinary wheel-on-rail adhesion for traction, but has a third rail between the tracks specifically for emergency braking.

Now that's a transit wayfinding symbol I hadn't seen before

The Douglas Bay Horse Tramway has dedicated (ish) lanes and accepts contactless cards for fare payment onboard. On the other hand it only runs every 30+ minutes, and only in summer.

At the north end of the horse tram one can transfer to... a weird electric interurban, also half-hourly in summer

eurasianet.orgAzerbaijan reopening land border, resuming rail connection with GeorgiaBaku to keep other land border crossings closed.

22 May

eurasianet.org/azerbaijan-r... reports that the Georgia-Azerbaijan border reopens May 26! In combination with the occasional passenger-accepting Baku-Aktau freighters, this makes travel from Europe to East Asia without flying or crossing Russia or Iran possible for the first time since the pandemic.

22 May

(Note that this only works eastbound, foreigners *entering* Azerbaijan via the sea crossing remains impossible without rare special permits since the pandemic, but *exiting* that way has generally been allowed.)

20 Apr

What places have you been with the most Coruscant/Trantor sorts of vibes (city on top of city on top of city, without a clearly visible ground level)?

lexande reposted

Nolan Hicks

@ndhapple.bsky.social

11 Apr

Fun find this afternoon: In 1957, the Port Authority did the engineering work to link the downtown PATH to the Lexington Avenue subway local tracks.

2 Apr

Trying out the new GoVolta low-cost rail service from Berlin to Amsterdam. We found out two hours before departure that you're supposed to "check in" by four hours before, but got the website live chat to send us our boarding passes anyway.

Huge underwater bike parking garage next to Amsterdam Centraal, with timeline of maps of the growth of Amsterdam on the walls

6 Apr

Now heading back to Berlin using Deutschlandticket (plus a €17.58 semi-flexible Amsterdam-Hengelo ticket; conveniently Deutschlandticket is valid from Hengelo even though it's in the Netherlands)

Map seen on a gate in the NDSM area of Amsterdam, do you recognize it?

Arrived Amsterdam Centraal a couple minutes early in spite of a remarkable amount of waiting on sidings to be overtaken by ICEs, freight, and even a FlixTrain. Feels like they really cobbled together the timetable path for this service out of spare parts.

6 Apr

Ferries in Amsterdam have clocks counting down the minutes and seconds until departure. Though I did see one leave one second late.

We left Berlin Gesundbrunnen 35 minutes late but nonetheless reached Hannover Hbf ahead of schedule... and then proceeded to pass through it without stopping, I guess because nobody bought a ticket or checked in?

2 Apr

Is this an April Fool's joke or just a data error?

What is this, Amtrak?

Held for an hour in Forbach for no apparent reason (I assumed border checks but didn't see any actual check).

It's weird how Berlin's Ringbahn is among its most important passenger rail lines while Paris just abandoned theirs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_...

I guess for most of the 20th century it was more useful as a freight line than for passengers? And by the time that use ended in the 80s, radial Metro lines all had their stops on the adjacent boulevards & not in place to connect with the Ceinture, so circumferential trams were built there instead.

(Something similar is also the only way I can make sense of London leaving its north-south S-Bahn tunnel without passenger service 1916-1988, from the opening of the tube lines in the 1900s until the shifts in freight traffic in the 60s the Snow Hill Tunnel's comparative advantage was freight.)

The Paris cable car is both a lot of fun and seems plausibly quite useful for people living in the area served. Daily ridership is apparently 12.5k, not huge but a good 3x the London cable car for example.

There are a number of empty lots adjacent to stations that look like they are being prepared for development now, though the outer terminus is still adjacent to an undisturbed farm field.

transit-timelines.github.ioRapid Transit Timelines and Scale ComparisonMaps every 5 years, 1840-2025

19 Nov 2025

Updated for 2025: timeline maps of every metro system in the world transit-timelines.github.io

flickr.comSan Francisco rapid transit plans (1956)The San Francisco City Planning Department's response to the 1956 BART Regional Rapid Transit report. (The double-line routes are BART; the black lines are Muni.)

1 Nov 2025

@enf.bsky.social Do you still have the pdf that was once at trafficways.org/scans/1956-b...? Or any other information about the 1956 SF rapid transit proposal depicted in www.flickr.com/photos/walki...

22 Sept 2025

Finally trying out electrified Caltrain

8 Aug 2025

Furthest I've been (on land): N: 71.171°N Nordkapp, 1989; as an adult 69.715°N Nordpissen, Tromsø, 2025 E: Likely 176.378°E near Waimangu on a Wellington-Auckland bus, 2013 S: 65.065°S Port Charcot, 2020 W: 159.782°W or so in Kauai, 1988; as an adult 150.022°W Point Woronzof, Anchorage, 2013

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com

Furthest I’ve been: N: W. 4th Ave, Anchorage E: Probably in the Danube Delta (god forsaken place, stay away!), or if not then the Asian side of Istanbul S: Coyoacán, Mexico City W: Somewhere on the North Shore of Oahu probably