Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 1d

Relatedly Falling Down had this feeling of After The End for the cold war aerospace industry that was enthralling, too

1 5

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 1d

visiting El Segundo all I could think about was white-short-sleeve-shirt-clad engineers out of the crying of lot 49

1 5

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 4d

House of Friendship?

1 1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 5d

several fantastic case studies in failure of alternative financing and procurement

2

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 5d

The foreboding 80s ad run by socialist-aligned railway union Kokuro prophesies:
As in England, as in France... As in Japan.
The 83 deficit lines are wiped from the map with a dramatic effect.

1 2 3

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 5d

Part of the thing is that in this imaginary world the trip is substantially less than an hour with a fleet with uniform characteristics better than today's push-pulls and with more conservative padding.

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 5d

Controversially I could say that the better way to relieve capacity woes is to move to commuter seating instead of suburban layout, but I suspect the response to this would be "What are we, a bunch of Orientals?"

1 2

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 5d

I think it's a mistake to think that the demand/capacity patterns in Dresden are at all a good match for the situation in New York, mainly because of the order of magnitudes of scale.

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

yep + also meant 125 million instead of 1.25 billion, oops. was thinking in units of 億

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

The real thrift is in Japan where half-motored suburban sets of 18.5 metre coaches are routinely had for like 1.25 billion yen a coach and ordered in trickles according to a company's capital plan

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

316 with an additional option for 200 something at a somewhat lower marginal price.

It's about as much train as Munich's Class 1420 order and those are half as expensive per metre length lol

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

The order for up to 558 M-9As for the MNRR and LIRR are priced all in at like 7 million a car, which is a pretty large scale and a pretty large price. Everything New York seems horribly expensive

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

The funny thing is how LRVs are completely different across the Canadian border because the Sacramento Siemens plant eats everything in the USA

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

The Plattsburgh Premium is really crazy, you see things like Connecticut paying substantially more for 60 single level trailer coaches than Massachusetts did for 124 bilevel coaches made in Korea, like what is anyone doing here

2 1 12

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

Where were the CRRC Tangshan American commuter cars made for other cities? I remember some controversy when it was characterised as putting together knockdown kits

1 1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 6d

ratelimited on World Bank Open Data. the world was at my fingertips and i took it for granted

4

Reposted by kaptrice 🐦‍⬛

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6d

And this is true also for regional service on most lines that survived the cuts of the postwar years.

Daily trains between Bologna and Imola (one direction)

1938 = 11
1975 = 21
1998 = 31 ( w/ 1 hourly-ish clockface IR regional express)
2025 = 58 (with 2 hourly clockface fast and 1-2 hourly locals)

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6d

We don't realize how radically different (and overall better) intercity rail travel is today in many European countries compared to before WWII, which is generally considered the peak of the railway era.

trains per day, Milano-Roma (one direction)

1938 = 18

tomorrow = 91

five times more

7 11 52

Reposted by kaptrice 🐦‍⬛

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 6d

We don't realize how radically different (and overall better) intercity rail travel is today in many European countries compared to before WWII, which is generally considered the peak of the railway era.

trains per day, Milano-Roma (one direction)

1938 = 18

tomorrow = 91

five times more

7 12 73

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 7d

plaza.rakuten.co.jp/marutetsuex/...
This was a nice prompt to think about. There's a lot of interesting history in teh world.

1 3

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 7d

reseau3gg.centerblog.net/7551-les-mv
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemisch...
Apparently the Bundesbahn and SNCF ran them into the 1980s, and the Reichsbahn into the 90s!

3 4

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 8d

Each of them had sub-million automobiles by the time militarisation cut off civilian supply but Germany was probably closer to mid 10e5 where Japan was low 10e5. Italy somewhere intermediate

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 8d

But there's still Germany and Italy, with much more comparable motorisation, to think about

1

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 8d

Along with the Netherlands! Apparently Shima Hideo was influenced by the Mat'35 and Mat'36 plying Rotterdam-Amsterdam.

Nilo @nilo.bsky.social · 9d

I think Japan was several decades early in the use of MUs on long distance services?

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 8d

More narrowly, it's that the Pacific Electric of significant influence; the PE was a significantly more robust operation than almost all other American interurbans and at a very early date American interurbans were clearly shittier and cheaper than many 軌道法-regulated private railways

2

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛ @kaptrice.bsky.social · 8d

Yes, that's part of why the Bullet Train project (the 1939 one) settled on standard gauge on a new route instead of quadrupling the old Tokaido . That and the prospect of through running from Shimonoseki to the content via ferry

1