Choo-choo y’all, here’s where you can post pics, clips (>10 hrs strongly encouraged), and facts about trains.
I watched a very good fly-on-the-wall documentary called The Iron Ministry. It’s free on YouTube. A lot of train videos will focus on the sights outside of the train, but this is all about the interior. It’s a pretty great encapsulation of what it’s like (or maybe what it was like) to ride on a train in China. I wish America had a vibrant train culture. That would change my life immediately.
I watched this video once and all the commenters were shit talking the attendant for not pouring the Champagne right and how it’s all fancy chef foods in the dining car but then, my word, once you cross over into the UK they’re just flopping finger sandwiches and bread baskets at you.
It’s very good in the background but there are a few conversations that you absolutely must pay attention to. I think I’ll time stamp one of them later when I have time.
One of the most memorable experiences of my life was a train trip from Norfolk, VA to Sedona, AZ that took two and a half days. I was about eight or nine and it was with my two brothers, mom, and dad, and I have so many vivid images.
Waking up in WV and barreling around the mountains with jagged rock just outside my window…a brief stop in Chicago that was a particularly blustery day so the city really lived up to it’s nickname…making friends with another kid in one of the cars who brought their Game Boy too, playing linked Tetris for the first time and him gifting me Metroid II and Penguin Wars…a brief stop in NM where I got off and got a sick necklace with a turquoise cross (later stolen from my gym locker about five years later)…and finally a snow storm in AZ that was the first they’d had in a long time and was my first time in one.
I really love trains because of that trip and have been hoping to take a long ride again since then but it’s a little expensive, time-consuming, and my wife is not really into them. But we had train tickets finally booked to Orlando to see her dad and were going to go with our at-the-time 15 month old around April.
When it was clear we needed to call and cancel our tickets and we did so it felt like a passage I’d hope for so long would open again had to be re-closed. There’s way worse things in the world but it just sucked for a bit because, as this thread will hopefully celebrate, trains are great and not getting to ride one is not so great.
I loved riding on long-distance trains when I lived in China. I like the ephemeral relationships that form with other passengers and the way that time gets distorted. I think I’m feeling especially nostalgic because I miss being surrounded by people: people eating sunflower seeds, playing cards, selling belts and toys, and humming to themselves. Just sitting in a train, you’re a part of it.
I think that’s exactly right, all those experiences I have packed into a short trip but they’re more vivid than most other two consecutive days of my life. Beautifully put.
aim for the top!
That’s probably as weird as you can get, the designer of this train has done the Ferrari Enzo, some glasses and a teapot, among other things, and the price for a ticket is somewhere around 10k… if that’s too weird, it’s easy to find something more “normal”, i guess!
I had an idea for a blog that I regret letting go. I wanted to take pictures and document the various metro stations in Chongqing, places of interest, best food nearby, etc. There were so many interesting stations in the main part of the city, I could have kept myself entertained for months. I can’t find pictures of some of my favorite stations but here are videos of a couple interesting ones.
The amount of escalators in this video is actually quite common in the city though I guess none are as extreme as this.
This station is also close to a gas station that is accessed through a tunnel that formerly served as a bomb shelter during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
yes, i love this north east coast route. it got to the point where i started getting the slower train from teesside to newcastle because the scenery was so much prettier.
