Internet Video Thread

[Artlav]

Oh man...that's bad. As bad as it gets.

Not so sure.
This might be worse:

 

[Artlav]

Something more day-to-day.
Morning.
Moscow subway.
Train comes out of the depot to the first station.
Train's view.
People are standing essentially on the edge, millimetres away from the head-level-mounted rear view mirror of the train.

In HD, note the train on the left - already half full of people who want to cheat the lines by going into the opposite train that is about to turn around (if they are lucky).
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37gFv-I3QFg"]Утро - YouTube[/ame]

What is your rush hour like?

 

[Urwumpe]

What is your rush hour like?

I can't use a dashcam in Germany, but if I would use one... you would see the full beauty of Lower Saxony, since I constantly drive in my car in the opposite direction of the rush hour of Wolfsburg...

But soon, I will also use my mountain bike for the 20 km to work every other day, so no problem of taking a small gopro with me :thumbup:

 

[steph]

I can't use a dashcam in Germany, but if I would use one... you would see the full beauty of Lower Saxony, since I constantly drive in my car in the opposite direction of the rush hour of Wolfsburg...

But soon, I will also use my mountain bike for the 20 km to work every other day, so no problem of taking a small gopro with me :thumbup:

Can't use dashcam in Germany? :idk: Some cars even come with incorporated cameras now. Some legal privacy issue at work maybe?

In response to Artlav's video....some bus drivers in Cluj tend to get overly zealous and leave no space between the wheels and the station platform. Sadly, this puts the right side-mirror above the platform itself. Distance between the mirror and the ground is about 1,80 m, so, as you can imagine, there have been cases of people getting smacked in the head by mirrors when it's crowded in the station. Also, more retarded: some tram stations have no platform. As in, the tram line runs through the middle of the road, tram stops, opens the doors and the passengers step out, possibly into oncoming traffic. If you don't check and the driver of the car doesn't pay attention , tough luck

Seriously though, rush hour in Cluj is becoming increasingly hellish. It's mostly a car city, and becoming ever more so. Especially in the last few years, the number of cars has multiplied enormously (ratio of cars to parking spaces is something like 5 to 1, which basically means cars everywhere). There's been a traffic rearrangement project in the late 2000's which helped things, but now it's simply not enough. Public transport is also road-based (even the tram shares the way with traffic), so it gets affected too. In 10 years time at most, without some form of under/over ground passages and transport, this city/town is facing complete gridlock. Seeing how public investment gets done around here (most projects get downsized, severely delayed or downright cancelled), there is no easy way out of it

Most responsible and ok choice in Cluj? Get a bicycle. Depending on where oy live, it litteraly is often faster than both car or bus travel. Downsides include a high rate of bike theft (you REALLY need anti-theft devices) and an aggressive attitude of drivers against cyclists, as in you get honked so often (even when you have right of wa, and for simply using the road) that it becomes a normality. But the upside is that you usually use pedestrian passages and routes that aren't usable by car.

Edit: I'd love to see a legal opinion of the cases when someone gets hit by a bus mirror. Technically, the bus is on the road (or at least the wheels are), so it has right of way. But then again, the smacked dude is on the boardwalk. Presumably the law should err on the safe side and see the driver guilty for endangering people /passengers

 

[Urwumpe]

Can't use dashcam in Germany? :idk: Some cars even come with incorporated cameras now. Some legal privacy issue at work maybe?

Right now, you are not allowed to make videos of other "partipants in the road traffic" and publish them in the internet. You can get fined for it. Outside the road traffic, the situation is less decided.

 

[jedidia]

What is your rush hour like?

The situation at swiss train stations is pretty similar, except that people are a usually a bit more concious of safety margins... we still have high-speed passings through train stations.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

And now it's train porn time! Here's a view from the train cockpit of Japan's newest bullet train line that will open on March 14:

Here's a map of that line with all the stations marked. Try to identify the stations in that video.

 

[Andy44]

What is your rush hour like?

I am fortunate enough to be able to drive to work while avoiding the more heavy traffic areas, but if I have an appointment after work I can caught up in it pretty bad.

A lot of people choose to live south of DC in Prince William County, Virginia, where you can get a bigger house for less, but the price you pay is being trapped on the I-95 mobile parking lot.

As for the commuter trains here, this is a typical underground DC Metrotrain station. Inside the city the stations are mostly below street level, and out in the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia a lot of the stations are elevated.

That rubber mat surface on the platform is like the "warning track" in baseball, when you feel your feet on it you instinctively know that another step puts you right against the train. Even when it's crowded people generally don't stand any closer than that. The lights on teh deck edge flash to warn of an approaching train.

Every year there are several deaths, mostly suicides, I am thinking. That's a really awful thing to do to the train engineer. (Not to mention the cleanup crew.)

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

OK it looks like my railway fan instinct has been tickled on again.... :rofl:

I don't wanna spam here with too many Japan/East Asian rail videos so here's one HSR ride through European plains:

 

[kamaz]

My city from a drone: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuC5-R4wDYU"]Kraków z lotu ptaka - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Urwumpe]

The Scottish goal of the month:

Too cute.

 

[kamaz]

OK it looks like my railway fan instinct has been tickled on again.... :rofl:

I don't wanna spam here with too many Japan/East Asian rail videos so here's one HSR ride through European plains:

I see your Belgian plains an raise you Norwegian mountains:

---------- Post added at 10:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 PM ----------

 

[steph]

Nice rail vids. While not really being what you'd call an active rail fan, I love trains. I guess I'll head out with a camera this weekend to take some shots of the passing trains, since I live close to an active railway.

Contrails at ground level. I searched high and low for a video of something like this. A bit disappointing that it looks a bit mundane and not the massive plume they leave behind at cruise level.

 

[Urwumpe]

I see your Norwegian mountains and I rise by Swiss Alps

 

[Andy44]

All those mountain rail routes are spectacular. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania Dutch country, the Strasburg Railroad still uses steam locomotives to move modern freight cars around. This is a tourist line that operates several steam engines, and since the machines are fired up each morning, they are also sent down the branch line to make a little extra cash on the side. When it's not tourist season they use their diesel switcher units to pay the bills.

 

[C3PO]

They make a profit using steam locomotives? :blink:
When I was studying engineering large marine engines were just hitting 0.5 efficiency. (Mechanical output 50% of thermal energy of the fuel) The best piston steam engines managed a whopping 0.008 efficiency.

 

[Andy44]

They make a profit using steam locomotives? :blink:
When I was studying engineering large marine engines were just hitting 0.5 efficiency. (Mechanical output 50% of thermal energy of the fuel) The best piston steam engines managed a whopping 0.008 efficiency.

I'm not sure, but I think they are just piggybacking on the fact that the engines are fired up and burning fuel to begin with for the tourist business, so instead of letting them sit idle they might as well make themselves useful. Plus the line is only a few miles long.

It's probably also good PR, as the rail fans eat this stuff up. It's about an hour's drive from Philadelphia so it draws a lot of tourists; from what I've seen there they must be one of the more lucrative tourist train operations in the country. Most weekends in the warmer months there are big crowds and at least three locomotives fired up at the same time.

One of the engines was dressed and painted up to look like Thomas the Tank Engine, which is an abomination to hardcore rail fans, but the kids absolutely love it so it sells a lot of tickets.

They also have one of the few fully functional steam engine shops left in the country, so they make money contracting repair and refit work to other steam engine tourist operators around North America. I think they have a foundry and can manufacture new parts and stuff, IIRC.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Thomas the Tank makes regular visits to Chattanooga too. Then of course this is a town pretty well know for travel by rail, eh? The Tennessee Valley Railroad has a pretty decent operation, and a fair amount of rolling stock.
Some of the trains are "movie stars", if you saw "October Sky" you might have noticed a 2-8-2 pulling a long line of coal hoppers, we know her best as 4501. This train is 104 years old, and recently rolled out of the maintenance shop better than new. Baseball fan who saw "42" watched 630 (renumbered for the film) and the train station served as a movie set too.
The kid in me likes the smoke, soot and noise of a steam engine. Seeing all the exposed mechanical parts awakens the inner engineer and I'll probably do a lot of volunteer work down there once I retire. I love spinning metal, whether it's a gas turbine or steam driven; it's all good.

 

[kamaz]

I see your commercial steam railroad in Pennsylvania and raise you a museum of steam trains in Poland:

 

[Evil_Onyx]

Same vain as kamaz
Great Central Railway

And It has been making a profit since 2007.