• Famed British Rail ‘ship’ has no buyers (London Rail)
• Penny Lane was about a bus station: Video (NealBeatZone)
• Map of High-Speed Rail in France 2025 (Lars’ Transport Maps)
• Chicago’s Secret O’Hare Airport Train: Video (Travelog)
• Penn Station Can Handle the Load: NY is ready for Through-Running (Effective Transit Alliance)
• Manchester Exchange Station – The Forgotten Railway Giant of the North: Video (Trains Trains Trains)
• How Covent Garden tube station nearly closed in 1935 (Ian Visits)
• The Invention of “Accidents”: They are Systemic Inevitabilities (New Republic)
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The “Battleship building” reminds me of BT’s Baynard House, just north of Blackfriars Pier. Same idea, a concrete ship. It’s just impossible to actually apricate it from any location.
At least it’s by the Thames, I suppose.
The Penn station article reminds me of the previously shared Pedestrian Observations article about high project costs.
The common theme is the inability of organisations to challenge and re-shape operating practices to improve efficiencies around the use of expensive infrastructure. I would observe this as a problem not just in transport, but in other industries with labour-intensive logistics and multi-organisation supply chains.
The challenge is that the interfaces between different organisations/units and/or differently trained roles have been fixed within the logistics chain for a very long time, and such automation that exists is limited in scope to one job role or organisation in the chain, which becomes a silo. This ends up creating needless duplication and thus cost, because the different systems and practices adopted in each silo are incompatible. Automation can increase the scope of what can take place in each silo, but this generates complexity without additional value until the structures can be changed.
And changing the structures has become next to impossible. Multiple rounds of outsourcing and offshoring initiatives, alongside complete supply chains fixed by government privatisation structures, mean that not only are multiple stakeholders intrinsically resistant to change, but no-one really understands how the myriad of organisational pieces fits together any more.