• Hatfield remembered, twenty years on (Rail Engineer)
• Congestion and curves – challenges in constructing HS2 in the Chilterns (Ian Visits)
• Learning to Drive a Train with GB Railfreight: Video (Jago Hazzard)
• Waiting for the Bus in New York City is Hot & Miserable. Here’s Why. (NASA / Transportation Alternatives)
• Japan to Restart Rare Hovercraft Ferry Service (Maritime Executive)
• Was This 393 Mile UK Railway An Antenna To Control Nuclear Submarines?: Video (Ringway Manchester)
• The Cross-Continental Public Transport Race has Started! (CityLab)
• The bizarre reason pneumatic tubes are coming back (BBC Science Focus)
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The hovercraft negotiating the S-shaped accessway is something to behold. The training of new pilots must be “fun”! One wonders how the economics can stack up, as with a 15-mile crossing it must get too rough for operations on occasions.
Re. pneumatic tubes, waste collection is a straightforward many to one (or three, for mixed waste) system of piping. Moving samples round a hospital, unless there’s a loop and everything passes everywhere, would need some sort of diversion mechanism, not mentioned in the article. It sounds to me as if a miniature railway, with conventional point-switching, would be a better bet.
Re pneumatic tubes:
A must-watch is the movie Brazil!
On the topic of pneumatic tubes (and films!) as well, the scene from “The Living Daylights” where they smuggle a person through the Trans-Siberian Pipeline in a capsule using air pressure feels like a prediction of where Hyperloop will end up once the budget airlines start buying in.
In case you missed it, LR investigated the evolution of pneumatic tube communications networks, to modern day systems in hospitals and large stores.
Wormholes through space are obviously a very advanced and entirely natural form of pneumatic tube or hyperloop. In the case of both the ends will possibly have to be closed and opened to permit spacecraft to pass through.
Essentially a pneumatic tube on a gigantic scale except propulsion is something other than pressurised air. Could be Alcubierre driven or force fields utilised to propel space craft through.
Not sure humans have any provenance of originality on the concept!