Free Republic

As the anti-flying movement known as “flight shaming” is gaining momentum across Europe, Switzerland is adding new train services to some of its international routes. The TGV company Lyria, which is owned jointly by the Swiss Federal Railways and France’s SNCF, is adding trains to its high-speed link between major Swiss cities and Paris. Beginning on December 15th, 30% more connections will be offered to the French capital from Geneva, Zürich, Lausanne and Basel. That means an increase from the currently available 13,500 seats daily to 18,000 by the end of 2020. The goal of the expanded service is to...

About 500 passengers aboard three Amtrak trains were stranded overnight in a remote part of northern Illinois because of blowing and drifting snow, Amtrak officials said today. The trains were halted late Monday near Mendota, about 80 miles west of Chicago. The passengers were aboard the Southwest Chief from Los Angeles, the Illinois Zephyr from Quincy, Ill., and the California Zephyr from the San Francisco Bay area, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told The Associated Press. The trains became stuck around 4:15 p.m. ET Monday after they hit a 12-foot snow drift that paralyzed the engines, passenger Bryan Plummer told ABC...

Really chuffed: First full-size British steam locomotive for 50 years fires up Last updated at 22:25pm on 01.08.08  First came the sweet toot of the whistle, then a steady hiss. Finally, sporting her battleship-grey undercoat, Britain's first new steam locomotive in almost half a century emerged in all her majesty. It was a sight that took those old enough to remember back to a golden age of rail travel. Even though Tornado only had 120 yards of track to cover as she chugged into action in a Darlington rail yard, the moment was, with good reason, marked with a...

Years ago when I had a full head of hair, I worked for the New Jersey Institute of Technology and gained a great respect for engineers and architects. Without them, nothing gets built, nothing works, and we would all be back rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. In early March, my local daily newspaper ran a story that was four paragraphs long and buried at the bottom of the page. Engineers see U.S. Infrastructure Sinking. It was one of those stories deemed newsworthy enough to include since it cited a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers,...