Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads, our curated list of topical and quirky transport links.
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- • Croydon’s trams go cashless by summer (IntelligentTransport)
- • The Tube’s psychology experiments (Wired)
- • 1950s battery train to Balmoral (AnonymousWidower)
- • Dedicated bus lanes without the extra lane (CityLab)
- • Shifts in the Short Trip: Latest trends in shared mobility (TalkingHeadways podcast)
- • Washington stars ride Metro to their game (SportsNet)
- • National (US mobility & urban form) Links (TheOverheadWire)
- • European car train posters (Retours)
- • Young Person’s Guide to Timetabling (John Bull)
Check out our most popular articles – Reconnections’ coverage of the Thameslink timetable fiasco:
And some of our other sections:
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I’m sure that the time of car sleepers will come again, given the increasing desire for cutting greenhouse emissions. Just because cars have got more comfortable and fast roads better doesn’t mean one wants to drive a thousand miles a day to get to one’s destination, yet by using a motor-rail section you cut vehicle emissions for the longest section yet are still able to carry what you want on holiday instead of pack light for a plane or add the expense of a hire car at your destination.
@AlisonW
In the US, Amtrak still operates their daily Auto Train car sleeper train between Washington, DC and Orlando, Florida. It had started as a privately operated train between 1971 and 1981, and Amtrak took over operations in 1983.
The alternative to car sleepers is now making it cheaper and easier to hire a car or use a car share at your destination. For example, Drive Now members can use Drive Now cars in other countries and cities.
Quinlet: Oh, indeed one can very easily hire vehicles at the ‘other end’ (and in 1998 I was one of Avis’s top ten customers in Europe) but that means you have to carry everything with you on the plane or train, which isn’t always the best preference. I relate it to the idea which keeps being proposed of individual ‘pods’ which join together for the central distance then split off for destinations: it makes the best use of energy in that middles section.
@AlisonW: Not to mention all the rental contract bullshit and hassle…
“1950s battery train to Balmoral” is misleading, as the de-Ded DMU simply ran on the Deeside line to the terminus at Ballater. I was expecting to read of a presumably narrow-gauge line from there to somewhere near the castle, though surprised that I’d never heard of it.
Twice recently I have read suggestions that the Deesside BEMU (Sc79998, Sc79999) was converted from a DMU, rather than built new. Hugh Longworth’s definitive listing suggests otherwise. If it was converted from one of the original “Derby Lightweights”, all of which were listed as still extant when the BEMU was built, (and indeed when it was withdrawn eight years later!) can anyone identify which one?