One snake, anyway. As reported by BBC News
A Swiss train has been taken out of service after a pet snake escaped from its owner and hid in a carriage, a local train company has said.
Experts have so far failed to catch the reptile, which vanished on Saturday, said Eric Luthy, a spokesman for the Neuchatel Regional Transport company.
I’ve seen a surprisingly large number of guinea pigs on Swiss trains, but never a snake.
(Link from Rob)
Past the halfway point in Son of 20 First Lines Rides Again. Here are some clues for the nine which nobody has yet guessed.
2. From the current album by Scandianvian band who have recently become national heroes in their home country; there’s even a set of stamps in their honour.
4. By the current kings of widdly prog-metal, from their last but one album,
6. A song by a ‘Cod Irishman’ allegedly inspired by an Arthur Machen short story
7. By a short-lived turn of the century goth-prog band (I think they did one other album) with a viola as a major element of their sound.
8. Current Scandinavian band who allegedly have some prog-rock influences.
10. Yet another bunch of Scandinavians, from the same nation as (2), but this song is in their native language. Currently on hiatus while they find themselves a new singer.
11. Even more Scandinavians, featuring one member of the neo-prog supergroup Transatlantic.
18. From the recent live album by an American bluegrass/prog/jam band.
19. Recent song by a bunch of Welshmen that wear their nationality on their sleeve.
The only person enjoying that guitar solo is the guitarist
- Alex Kapranos, lead poseur of media darlings Franz Ferdinand, on how to make an utterly formulaic sausage factory record.
What’s cool ever given us? A whole generation of musicians who haven’t got the imagination to embrace anything but the most obvious and one-dimensional
- Gaz Cobain of Amorphous Androgynous, clearly talking about people like Alex Kapranos.
I realised it’s been a month since I went to Switzerland, and I’ve never posted any of the photos I took on the trip
Here’s the very first one I took on the trip, at the station buffet in Kandersteg. I can’t imagine anywhere quite like this in Britain. What railway station has a beer garden with a view of a very busy main line surrounded by magnificent scenery?
Just one without any trains in it. This is in the mountains above Kandersteg at the top of the Sunnbuel cable car. If you think the scene is somewhere in the Misty Mountains of Middle Earth, remember that Tolkein used to go on hiking holidays in this part of the world. Did JRRT once stand here?
Back to trains again, this is the famous Baltschieder viaduct, on the south ramp of the Lötchberg main line. The train is the Brig to Goppenstein local, hauled by one of the twelve ex-SBB Re4/4 sold to the BLS. While many of them now wear BLS new silver and green colours, this one’s still in the old SBB dark green.
On the north ramp this time, here’s one of the hourly Basel-Brig expresses, taken from the footpath that parallels the railway.
Great post in RPG Blog about Resolution Lag
As many of us get older, we often find that we no longer have time to game as much as we did before we grew up and had to deal with all this responsibility business, and that a wasted gaming session is a lot more of a nuisance than it was when it seemed like we had all the time in the world. To this I say, find the lag, and control it.
He identifies possible causes of resolution lag. It might be over-cumbersome game mechanics. It might be lack of player understanding of the game mechanics, leading to constant pauses while people look up obscure rules. Or it might even be scenarios that waste time on pointless activities rather than just cutting to the chase.
I find I’ve fallen out of love with long-winded combat systems that take forever to resolve a fight. I much prefer simpler and faster systems like Fudge, which resolve conflicts quickly and let you get on with the story. Of course, if you really like crunchy combat, that’s not for you, but there are probably other things you can cut. The point of reducing resolution lag is cut back on the bits of gaming you don’t like in order to concentrate on the bits you like.
Read the whole thing.
The Guardian’s David McKie investigates the mysterious world of parliamentary trains.
Even they, though, are better served than users of Reddish South and Denton, which for years have been serviced by one train a week, sometimes running from Stockport to Stalybridge, and sometimes the other way round. In recent months these trains have run out of Stockport at 11.23 every Saturday morning, reaching Reddish South five minutes later. No figure for either station is provided in the ORR report. Could it be that in the year 2004-5 no one used them at all?
I’ve actually ridden that line, when it ran on a Friday afternoon. This is one of the so-called ‘parliamentary trains’ that runs once a day or once a week on little used lines so that the operators don’t need to go through formal closure procedures. Many of these are short sections of line with no stations, such as the short stretch of line between Heald Green and Styal avoiding Manchester Airport. The famous Stockport to Stalybridge line is still used by freight trains, and for occasional weekend diversions, so little money would be saved by not running the one weekly passenger service.
I have no explaination for the great mystery of Watford West. Who can tell us how 25 people a year can use a station which has not only had no trains since 2001, but no longer even has any tracks?
Another one. Same rules as before, if you think you recognise any, put your answers in the comments, and no cheating by searching in Google. This lot has a lot of classic 70s prog-rock.
1. A well-known Bognor restraunt owner disappeared early this morning
- Harold the Barrel, Genesis (Steve Jones)
2. Attention class, here we come, we kick your ass, that’s lesson one.
3. Cat’s foot, iron claw, neurosurgeons scream for more
- 21st Century Schizoid Man, King Crimson (Rob)
4. Hello Mirror - so glad to see you my friend
5. I had a mother chasing planets, shopping doctors for her Vicodin
- Surfing down the avalanche, Spocks Beard (Steve Jones)
6. I stood upon the balcony with my brandy glass.
7. I’d like to visit Kashmir and shout over this land.
8. In nolan time sign what does the mind cover
- Mew, Apocalypso (fds)
9. It would appear that male pattern baldness has set in
- Bald, The Darkness (Rob)
10. Kerran vain haaveeni nähdä sain
11. Mother, what’s it all about
12. She was the keeper of all my reason
- Queen of Hearts, David Coverdale (Steve Jones)
13. Somewhere in your eyes that very special glow
- Salisbury, Uriah Heep (Steve Jones)
14. Standing in the space that holds the silent lace of night
- The Emperor in his War Room, Van der Graaf Generator (Steve Jones)
15. The clock strikes twelve, and moondrops burst
- Astronomy, Blue Öyster Cult (Murray Ewing)
16. The sky is red, I don’t understand
- Burn, Deep Purple (Steve Jones)
17. Train arriving, sixteen coaches long
- Mystery Train, UFO or Elvis (Chris)
18. When I was a boy, at the cold blue lake
- Hunting Song, Railroad Earth (Scott)
19. When did life get so, get so complicated
20. Yesterday as morning came a smile upon your face
- Yours is no disgrace, Yes (Fred Webb)
The new Mostly Autumn album Heart Full of Sky is available for pre-order.
Following the example of Marillion, they’re recording a limited edition double album, with a retail single album retail version to follow. The double album will only be available for direct order from the band’s website, and only 2333 will be made.
I’m hoping the double album format will keep both the older and newer fans happy, just as Marillion’s Marbles managed to do. There’s some evidence that the fanbase seems to be dividing into two camps, one that prefers the shorter and punchier rock numbers that characterised “Storms” and “Passengers”, and some of the long-term fans that prefer the longer progressive/celtic/folk-rock material that featured heavily on the earlier albums . With two CDs there should be room for some of both styles.
Transport books are a bit like heavy metal music. They are “specialist”, so much so that there are specialist transport bookshops, where browsers can be assured that they won’t have to look at such nonsense as fiction or biography, but can just stick with Branch Lines to East Grinstead or Vintage Tractors in Colour. As a consequence, there are specialist transport publishers, such as Ian Allan or David and Charles, to cater to their needs
From a review of Battle for the North by Charles McKean.
Remember the science fiction of half a century ago? With all those Art Deco monorails and aircars? Those stories were set in the times we ought to be living in today. Where did that future go?
Japan, it seems.
OK, so it’s not actually a monorail, but the styling is pure Flash Gordon. I can see this appearing on a Traveller planet as the shuttle between the starport and the city.
Notice that dirty great flange on the font end. Surely this is the ultimate solution to level crossing accidents, straight out of the “Think of it as evolution in action” school of design. Don’t get your ground car in front of that thing….
