Livery of Canadian Locomotives...

Trains...

More trains...

Surprisingly little difference (18 mph) between wheeled and magnetic levitation top speeds. Both records in special setups, BTW.
Various factors have sure done a job on US rail.

US rail is different than the rest of the world as their main concern is moving people where ours is freight. Freight doesn't have to move at 200 mph, more concerned with tonnage, longer distances, and as cheap as possible.

Roundhouse...

New Zealand earthquake...

I love telephoto lens compression. It really shows the curvy track. Obviously it's bad enough to replace, but how bad is it really? Could a train have navigated it as slow speed?

What makes you think it's compressed, the shadow of the utility pole is spaced properly.

I'm not saying it's digitally altered in any way. I'm saying the choice of the lens and the location of the photographer both really accentuate the curve of the track. If you were to take an aerial shot of the track, it wouldn't look nearly as curvy as it does from this angle with this lens at this distance.

Look at the two guys. They look like they are standing maybe 3 feet from each other.

But when you look closely, the guy between the rails is lined up roughly with the shadow of the front of the white truck.

The guy who is bent over is lined up (to my eye) a little bit closer to the camera than the shadow at the rear of the truck. The truck is roughly 20 feet long. Those guys are roughly 20-30 feet from each other, but they look like they are right next to each other. That because of how the picture was taken with a telephoto lens.

Similarly, the track had the bends to it, and we might think those bends occur in about 20 feet or so of track length, but I bet it's more like 100 feet of track length. I have no real way of knowing based only on this picture. I can't see the ties clearly enough to count them.

Now this is a buckled track...

I have seen that rail pic before and wondered why the track seemed to have moved more that then rail bed.
There has been a lot of discussion. Here is a good one:
https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/...-railway-line/

That was the 2010 New Zealand quake. I can't tell where the front of the truck is or what's part of the backhoe or whatever is shadowed.

https://www.civildefence.govt.nz/res...y/earthquakes/

Damn, that link of Jim's is interesting but hard to read scrolling back and forth horizontally.
A lot of the links are dead after 10 years, the aerial video would have been interesting.
What I did pick up is...
magnitude 7.1 earthquake
a 22 km surface rupture
4 m of horizontal displacement
9m bent track removed
135mm lens

The link I posted is about the photograph above. In fact, it contains that pic.

Did you read what I wrote?

Remember the miles of Union Pacific locomotives sidelined? This is part of the reason...

It's amazing the space those things take up. 50 miles!

That's like the calculated length of the lines to vote with social distancing in Wisconsin.

or at least some small fraction thereof.

Bruce: If you were talking to me, yes.
If you were talking to someone else, the answer is still yes.
I also had trouble with the wide screen and I am afraid it deterred me from reading the whole thing.

Yes you, I mentioned the information was from your link. Pain in the ass that it was I still got quite a bit from it, just took awhile. I'm pretty sure the OP and the similar view above were taken with a 130mm lens from the locomotive shown in the reverse direction pictures. The people insisting photoshop were pretty much shut down by people who were there. Much of the rail shape was not from shaking back and forth like I thought, but by the track securely fastened at two ends being compressed so they had to remove 9 meters of track.

After all that, rake some gravel and splice in two 30 foot sections of rail. Piece of cake.
I first read 9m as miles, but figured that was for the whole event.

This is about trains.
I don't recommend it, but thanks to TYWKIWDBI anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NvK...ature=youtu.be

That was awesome!

That's not what a train horn sounds like.:mad2:

Firetruck on rails...

The pumps on that truck are *entirely* adequate. But I wonder where the water supply is, probably in a tanker car or cars somewhere behind.

I wondered that also, those three would go through a shitload of water in just a few minutes.
And fighting forest fires a few minutes rarely does the job.

That rig was Fred Weyerhaeuser's idea.

Looks like they're pre-soaking to prevent a fire from reaching the railroad, rather than putting out active fires.

Or just showing off with three hoses going full blast and mostly up.

Hey, here comes Sparky...

That needs one of those fire engine cars.

Like those Trains in China. There is a picture of them in the cellar. Probably in this thread.

This is what I was thinking of in that earlier post.

The Brits poured tons of money into their railroad lines...

It's good to be a bricklayer.

Sent from my moto g(7) supra using Tapatalk

The first structure is the Ouse Valley viaduct which carries the London to Brighton railway line.



Link

We can't lay claim to the second example as it appears to be the Göltzsch Viaduct in Germany.



Link

Railroads and bricks. Beautiful.

There are many amazing things in the two links.
Two top ones are "The Göltzsch Viaduct was an extraordinarily large endeavor for its time. Each day, the nearly 20 brickyards along the railway line would produce 50,000 bricks ..."
And for the London-Brighton line "a decision to limit gradients along the line to 1 in 264."

Nice! Reminds me of a viaduct you go under when driving from Lake Alden PA to Binghamton NY. In the middle of nowhere, you come across this magnificent structure running literally through people's back yards.

Attachment 70752

Hey, look! It's The Cap'n!

How goes it, ya old Tarheel?! Good to see ya posting.

It is in fact a cool structure.

Hey tarheel, welcome back!

What everybody said.

Pennsylvania Railroad...

You could build an entire film around that beauty.

Dr Evil's personal train?

Where the trains aren't...

I wonder if that includes spaces that are now trails with no tracks previously occupied by trains.

I'd assume it does, train routes that use to was. For all we know it could include old right of ways that have changed hands and been developed, built on.

Is it any wonder there were plenty of takers for postings in India, Africa, and other warm spots?

Egads.

I thought that was the UK at first but the semaphore signals didn't look right.

Its Namur, Belgium, taken in 1938.

Courtesy of Google Translate...

Link in German.

To think what was in store for Belgium in 1938.

That crossed my mind as well.

From Wuppertal, Germany:

There was a little cleaning up and rebuilding in between. I'm pretty impressed that they rebuilt so closely to the original.

Attachment 71311
Attachment 71312

The site I found it on claimed it was Britain, but Belgium is close enough for the noir. :blush: