I. Russian Railways Russian Railways got its first high-speed rail service. The first trains will run between Moscow and St. Petersburg at speeds of up to 250 km/h in certain sections and will cover the distance between the cities in 3 hours and 45 minutes. The speeds are planned to increase to the maximum speed of 330 km/h after some minor adaptations. More pictures at: English Russia.
II. Japan Railways
Japan Railway unveiled their fastest shinkasen series, the E5, which will be put in operation in March 2011 on the Tohoku Shinkansen Line. It has a top speed of 320km/h top speed and a long nose to reduce wind resistance.
III. US Rail
Falling slightly behind other countries, US is trying to catch up. With the provisions for high-speed rail in the new economic stimulus package, Florida is looking into building a bullet train possibly along the lines of the French TGV. This, together with the California High-Speed Train, hopefully will bring the US rail network to a faster future.
The newest steam locomotive built in Britain, the Tornado was featured in a Top Gear three way race between a Jaguar XK120 car, a Vincent Black Shadow motorbike, and the No. 60163 Tornado.
Top Gear’s presenter, Jeremy Clarkson is in the Tornado’s while James May takes to the wheel of the Jaguar and Richard Hammond has the motorbike. Readers in UK can watch the whole episode on the BBC iPlayer. The rest of us can watch the episode via WatchTopGear Online.
Modelrailway TV is a television channel in HD for model railways. They are based in West Sussex, England but also post programs from their US location in Kasson, Minnesota.
The initial set of 50 programs range from introduction to the hobby, to the planning and construction of your layout. They also file reports from visits to local layouts and train shows. Across the Pond brings us the US shows.
The site is not free and the membership to the ModelRailway.tv channel is £24 ($45.00) for the year. You can watch a free 1 minute clip of each program to see if you like it. I have been watching a few clips and must say that the video quality and content are enticing. However, i would love to see a per-month subscription plan. $45 is steep for now, so maybe i will wait and see how often new content is added in order to justify committing that amount. Subscribe to their blog to keep in touch with their news and fresh content.
Since 1963, magnificent railroad stations were being demolished to make way for offices, parking lots and freeways. Some survived, only to be pushed underground as if having a railroad station look like railroad station was an impediment to progress.
The best way to learn weathering is to study the prototypes. You get to see how nature affects the railroad rolling stocks. The closeups of the rust and graffiti on the boxcars and oil tankers, I had taken on my visit to Bellows Falls,VT should help me in my next project.
History Channel aired Modern Marvels: Locomotives last Friday. It covered the history of locomotives from the oldest diesels to the fastest locomotive French prototype. In case you missed it, the entire episode is on you tube in 5 parts.
V like Vintage preserves a lot of historic black and white photographs of German Steam Locomotives. The photo descriptions are in german but the photos itself are nostalgic.
Last Thursday, i was able to spend more than 2 hours at Bellows Falls, VT watching and taking pictures of the trains. I wanted to ride the Green Mountain Railroad but at this time of the year, they were running only on specific dates. However, I was able to see some shunting by a GP38-2 locomotive and managed to catch the 11:56am Vermonter heading towards New York.
The Bellows Falls station was a delight. It had railroad history books, maps and photos of its glory days. It also had an authentic early 20th century urinal stall that i forgot to take a picture of but did find one on the web. Apart from the tourist excursion and the daily Amtrak, the station also sees its share of freight operations.
Click below for more pictures of Bellows Falls, VT:
Note: I have taken more pictures of the freight cars with rust and weathering details which i will post at a later date.
High Line, located on Manhattan’s West Side, is now officially open for the public as an elevated park.
The High Line was constructed in 1930 to move the trains away from the streets. It stopped operating in 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. They worked with the the City of New York to preserve and transform it into an elevated public park. I found the historical photos very fascinating. The images and videos give you a sense of the “green” transformation.
The 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in both the city of Sochi and the mountains one hour’s drive away. Russian Railways are playing a major role in preparing Sochi for the Games. They are improving access to Adler and Sochi for both passenger and freight trains and are also building a new track that will go all the way to the mountains. Here is a clip of the project and the technologies that will be used in the new trains.
The newest steam locomotive built in Britain, the Tornado was 
