Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

Fark. Hard to see how they got the rails like that.

If you do that, then those wheels will be very low friction and braking will be as bad as with steel wheels.

You need something that is soft to increase the contact surface and grip. You have to choose, one thing or the other. Can't have both.

Well you could have a train having steel wheels, but with rubber tyred wheels that could be dropped onto the track during heavy acceleration, heavy braking and for steep hills. But generally, steel wheels work well enough.

If you had tyres, you could get rid of the rails. Do you think it'll catch on?

Doesn't the Paris Metro have tyred plate-ways?

Yes - at least one line did in the 70s.

"Manners" in this context is just a way to bully people. Some "manners" may be devised just for this purpose.

There are things making a fuss about, and there are face masks. I am not convinced they have or had any efficacy whatsoever.

But I carried a few around to slap on for appearances sake

Google says it is the Radisson Metro Station in Montréal, Canada.

Looking at the photos, you can see the rails are special.

I have not found photos of the car wheels. Ah, here:

If they need extra traction they drop sand on the tracks.

Having one derailment per day, is a testament to the technical sophistication of rail.

And you don't just use any old sand. The picture on the page, shows it comes in its own spice rack. Classy.

And I have ridden a freight, but only in a sense. The family went on vacation one summer, down the coast. Bought passenger tickets. Get to the departure point, a single engine, six box cars, and one passenger car show up. The passenger car has a conductor, who takes the tickets and punches them. The single passenger car is divided into two sections. Royal Mail (so called) in the front of the car, passengers in the back. In the middle of the car, is a pot belly stove (not running, because its summer). The trip would not be noteworthy, except the bloody thing only did 40MPH for the entire trip (took about six hours). Um, "scenic" is the most positive term that comes to mind.

Paul

In the US it's a testament to ignoring maintenance to squeeze out the last dollar.

We've had others that dumped grain cars. The bears really appreciate those.

Only in the USA.

There is more than one rail company, and set of rail lines.

A company that is not capitalized properly, can't really afford to fix anything.

The tracks that are used for passenger rail, are likely better than some of these little spur lines.

When the Hudsons Bay line flooded out, and there was a lot of track damage, the owners didn't want to fix it, so a group bought the line, and that group paid to fix it up. That's mainly for grain shipments, via the port at Hudsons Bay. This shows you what a rail line looks like, after flood damage.

It seems they're still pouring money into that line.

Sounds normal to me :-) You don't always get to choose where a rail line goes.

And the fools want to run oil trains on those rails. Who are they kidding ? :-) Regular tracks don't like oil trains, what chance does that rickety mess have.

Paul

At least the US is better than Canada...

"The score for railroad infrastrucutre quality is based on only one question. The respondents are asked to rate the railroads in their country of operation on a scale from 1 (underdeveloped) to 7 (extensive and efficient by international standards)."

The rail system in the US is extensive, I'll give it that. It probably is fairly efficient. They don't lose too many boxcars but then a boxcar can't stray too far from the rails.

I may be a little prejudiced. I briefly worked for Penn Central during its two year path from merger to the largest at the time bankruptcy.

It was sad. When I was a young kid you could take a train from Union Station in Troy NY to Boston or NYC and expect to get home the same day. By the time I was in my teens the station was gone, but you could take the train to NYC from the station in Albany if you didn't have any pressing engagements in the city. You might get there someday, and in the winter the cars might even have heat. You did get to admire the scenic Hudson at

I was pleasantly surprised when I took the train from the Rensselaer station in the mid-80s after it had become AmTrak. On time, and with comfortable, modern cars. I think it owed that to being an extension of the AmTrak corridor loved by Biden to the NYS capitol.

They stole that idea from Wilson, Keppel and Betty.

This is a wonderful book:

The California Zephyr is a very scenic tourist route. Passes through Truckee and under Sugar Bowl.

One would think.