Saturday Variety

It's All On-Line No 327

The amount of misleading content on the interwebnet is astounding; so much so that a savvy user is tempted to treat anything on-line with "polite suspicion". A large percentage of public transport information is out of date and thus misleading.

News items are often sensational and very likely to be completely wrong. 

We become used to reports of major engineering projects praising the biggest, tallest, longest and widest of transport infrastructure. Here, for example. is "the highest bridge in the world".

Here is the finished bridge ...

... and here is the "headline" picture of the bridge as given by a recent on-line "news" item.

There is a possibility that Wikipedia gets it right.

The Duge Bridge, also called the Beipanjiang Bridge, is a four-lane cable-stayed bridge on the border between the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan in China. It spans the deep gorge of the Nizhu River (a tributary of the Beipan), near the town of Duge.

The bridge was the highest in the world, with the road deck sitting over 565 metres (1,854 ft) above the floor of the gorge until 2025, when it was surpassed by the  Huajiang Canyon Bridge ...

... which crosses the Beipan river some 200 kilometres (120 miles) downstream.

So most of the original article was, sort of, WRONG!

But Technology IS Wonderful?

The picture above popped into fbb's in box a few days ago and it certainly is very attractive, albeit spoiled by an unnecessary excrescence. But thanks to amazingly clever technology that fbb can use but doesn't really understand ...

... the distraction can be removed!

But look carefully. The train is approaching the viewer, hence its white light headlamp. But it has just passed a signal (viewed from its rear) showing stop. Meanwhile the "peg" for the opposite direction is raised into the go position, presaging the impending arrival of a train head on.

The so-called attractive appendage (now removed) might have been waiting to photo the crunch!

And, Talking Of Crunch

Insurance rates on this railway must be astronomical. We have already met one potential disaster ...

... and, amazingly, in exactly the same location, the same thing has happened again.

This time the exploding loco is a Deutsche Bahn diesel. Miss Scantily-Clad seems to have had a new hair do - or maybe a different female has borrowed the standard skimpy frock for her near suicidal run in front of another exploding locomotive. This time the same man appears to be carrying two yellow flags rather than the brown paper parcels of the first shot.

The midget in blue hasn't turned up this time.

Surely no one believes this rubbish?

Now Something Sensible - Possibly?

The headline said "Autonomous Train Carries First Passengers". And here they are, all two of them.

Not a busy trip, then?

The project is being masterminded by ...

... on a rural branch line in the Czech Republic. The line was closed down but has been bought by AZD as a test track. So they may be passengers, but they are not genuine fare paying passengers on a real train service.

And it is a test train ...

... and looks it!

There is no driver in the cab ...

... but there is a whole heap of technology back at "base".

The company talks, cautiously, about having "assistants" on the train who will be trained to take control if necessary. The technical term is a tr**n dr*v*r, so passengers need not be anxious.

Now where has fbb come across - and travelled on, paying money - autonomous railway operation with "assistants"?

Anywhere else?

That's old tech now.

And surely the old man has experienced autonomous trains without assistants ...

... if only he could remember where!

To be fair, the AZD technology is about running trains on existng lines without huge infrastructure costs. But if it needs a staffed "back office", on board "assistants" and oodles of technology, is it worth it? 

And if it needs an on-board "assistant" trained to take over when the clever stuff starts being stupid ...

A Bountiful Vision Of Banana Vans?
Oxford Rail have just announced a new wagon, used in the past and in the real world, for carrying bananas. Below is a typical BR van with yellow spot to remind staff that the its contents were perishable.

There were blue spots for fish!

fbb well remembers the excitement when Hornby Dublo brought out their "super detailed" (well, it was back then!) fish van.

Oxford Rail have just released their Great Eastern Railway banana van, distinctive because of its heavy door framework as seen on a 10 ton version.

Here is the model (12 ton).

But Oxford Rail don't want you to buy just one with your carefully garnered pocket money. They are offering TWELVE different versions.

Do buyers really care that much for such minutiae?

Apparently they do.

There are, apparently, strange elderly people who collect OO gauge tank wagons. Well there is one!

Crazy!

  Next Variety blog : Sunday 10 Aug