IntroductionIn today's episode, I'll be talking about Melbourne's amazing train network. Melbourne is known mainly for its superb and world class tram network but Melbourne also has an amazing train network as well. I'll be explaining why the system is good, the history of the system and what's to come. I have another blog post on this website talking about the Melbourne Metro Tunnel. Why is the system so good?Sydney's network is a lot different to Melbourne's network. Sydney shares track a lot which makes the whole system congested and if one platform closes, the whole station needs to stop. In Melbourne, all the tracks are separate from each other. All the lines go in their separate ways and connect in the city centre. This plan did kind of backfire because there was huge congestion on the city circle but Melbourne also fixed that with the Metro Tunnel. The history of the networkOn the 18th of September 1854, the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company opened their first line. It was an approximately 4 kilometre track between Flinders Street Station and Sandridge now called Port Melbourne. This line was the first steam railway line to be opened in Australia and the line also housed the first steam train ever to be produced in the Southern Hemisphere. The track is still in use to this day and has been converted to tram tracks. In 1857, the same company opened their second line going again from Flinders Street station to St Kilda. This is when private companies started showing up. The St Kilda and Brighton railway company extended that line towards Brighton. The first country line also started operation in the same year. The line was opened by the Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company and it went between Geelong and Newport. There were also many other lines and private companies that came and went but I won't talk about them now. What's to come?One of the most looked forward to projects of infrastructure in Melbourne was the Airport Rail Link. Since the airport's opening in 1970, many projects were proposed to create a rail link between Melbourne airport and the City. In July of 2018, the Victorian State Government and Australian Federal Government both pledged $5 Billion dollars towards the project. In 2020, planning commenced and construction should start extremely soon. Another project that would greatly help the suburbia of Melbourne is the Suburban Rail Loop. During the 2018 Victorian state election, the state government pledged another $300 million dollars to create this line. It will go from the proposed Airport Rail Link in Melbourne Airport connecting to suburban stations on the Craigieburn line, the Upfield line, the Mernda line, the Hurstbridge line, the Lilydale and Belgrave lines, the Glen Waverley line, the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines and the Frankston line. Construction on the first line commences this year as well and the full line will be operational in 2050.
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IntroductionIt's time for another episode. It's the premiere of Season 3: World Tour! This season, I am moving from podcasting and migrating to YouTube. The inactive Trains for All YouTube channel will now post videos of every Season 3 episode. Now let's talk about Season 3. This season, I will be going around the world and talking about different suburban rail, metro or tram networks. In today's episode, I'll be talking about Sydney. When, how and why it was built, what it is up to now and what is coming in the future. HistoryThe first line of the Sydney rail network was built in 1855 between Redfern station and Parramatta Junction station which is now Granville. This line was built because back then, Granville was a major agriculture hub and the line was used to not only transport people from houses in the city to their workplace but to also transport goods as the line acted as a freight line. Fun fact: unlike Britain, the railway was built by the government. By 1894, most of the outer city was connected to the main area of Sydney. Lines like the North Shore, South and Richmond were already up and operational. The PresentNow, Sydney has over 800 kms of track with over 190 different stations. Since 1894, the Bankstown line was fully opened, the Carlingford line opened, the Cronulla and Bondi Junction line fully opened, the Airport and East Hills line fully opened, the City Circle opened and the connection between Milsons Point and the city opened. One of the latest additions of the Sydney Suburban rail network is the South West line extension, adding Edmondson Park and Leppington stations. This opened in 2015. The Future If you want to listen to the explanation of the current Sydney Metro, listen to the episode on the Podcast Episodes tab on this website. Now let's talk about the future of Sydney Metro. The Sydney Rail link doesn't seem to be budging for a while. Right now the government is thinking about Sydney Metro. Future plans have been released to extend the Bankstown metro line to Liverpool, the new airport line to Leppington, the City and South West line to La Perouse and much more. By 2056, Sydney Metro might take over many parts of the Sydney Suburban Rail network. ConclusionThank you for reading! If you liked this leave a comment and watch my YouTube videos. Next week, I'll talk about Melbourne! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuzW15Fsua5gvQnB_eKDoAg
IntroductionI'm back and it's time for another episode. You might've heard about this new line in London. If you still don't know what it is. I'm here to tell you. In today's episode, I will tell you about the previous TfL Rail, what has been added, the new trains and what's to come. Let's get started. The TfL RailBefore the Elizabeth line was introduced, we had TfL rail. It was two different branches separated from each other. The first line was opened in 2015 between Liverpool Street in central London to Shenfield in the east. This replaced Greater Anglia services. In 2018, services started between Paddington and Heathrow airport, replacing the old Heathrow Connect line. Lastly for TfL Rail, Paddington to Reading in the east opened, replacing many Great Western Railway services between the two stations. This line used the 345 trains which we'll talk about later. What's new?On Tuesday the 24th of May 2022 at 6:30 am UK local time, the Elizabeth line officially opened! TfL Rail was rebranded as the Elizabeth line and 9 new stations were added, in the city between Paddington and Liverpool Street, Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon Elizabeth line stations were opened and past Liverpool Street was Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House, Woolwich and Abbey Wood were added. Why is the Elizabeth line important?There must be a reason the Elizabeth line was opened and well there is! Getting between the city centre of London takes a long time on the train and the Elizabeth line decreases travel time between the city. It also connects the largest areas of the city like Farringdon which connects people to Barbican and Moorgate and Bond Street which is a huge travel hub for commuters. The Elizabeth line also gets people in regional towns like Reading to be more connected to London, creating more jobs in the city and the towns. Lastly, it greatly helps people going to the Airport because the trains and platforms are more spacious and have more capacity meaning they can take more people. The trainsOriginally, Paddington to Heathrow and Liverpool Street to Shenfield had worse trains. On the Liverpool Street line, they used old Greater Anglia trains (Greater Anglia just bought new trains!) and on the Heathrow line they used the old trains of Heathrow Connect. Since 2019/2020, they used 7 car 345 trains and now they use beautiful 9 car 345 trains. The trains have a beautiful purple exterior, amazing LCD displays, wheelchair accessibility, standing handels with little roundels on them and of course the beautiful purple moquette.
This week I saw some really awesome things and also some strange things. First, we were going to Central Station in Sydney and there were a lot of people with suitcases and a lot of Olympic Special services from odd platforms. I think Central Station had a cold today. Second, the train we were on had a train number T6666. See photo below. Third, I saw this beautiful new team on the L1 line leaving Paddy's Markets tram stop in Sydney. See photo below. Last, I ordered something from London 3 weeks ago and it came a week early. Thank you so much London Transport Museum they are great and non-profit so you should definitely check them out. Link and photo below. ❤️❤️ Here is the wallet I bought. TimofeyWriter, editor, presenter and researcher IntroductionAmerica has always had a weird rail system and in today's post, I will tell you about the start of American Railway, how it declined and how it is now improving. How it all started.America had one of the largest train systems in the world back around in the 1940's. They had huge lines of streetcars and trams. American car companies that had started to promote their new diesel cars wanted to get more money and train and trams were preventing them to do this. Eventually, companies like General Motors, Firestone Tyres and Standard Oil started to buy up all these lines of track and all these amazing streetcars. This made American's who needed to get to work or other places buy cars. In 1956, the federal government announced that they were going to allocate $25 billion dollars to build 74,000 kilometres of highways around the country. What happened next.Trains were obviously still present in America but there was really only one option. Amtrak. Amtrak is a for profit company even though it is owned by the government just like Australia Post. If you have ever seen an Amtrak train , you would say they look really bad. They are fully metal and look like ugly freight trains. Amtrak has one line of track that can be considered as high speed. The Acela line operates from Washington D.C. to Boston through New York City. Out of its 650 km track only 54 km's of it is operated at 150 mph or 240 kmh. The rest goes at around 60 mph or 96 kmh. To give you some perspective a normal Sydney train goes 100 kmh and China's High Speed Rail averages at 321 kmh. What's happening next.More than half the population wanted to have high speed rail and some 12 years ago, California decided to build a true high speed rail. The first stage of the line was to be between Bakersfield and Merced and then to extend to San Fransisco to Anaheim which is where Disneyland is! The government then found out that it was $50 billion dollars over budget and president at the time, Donald Trump tweeted his thoughts of shutting of the project. Hopefully, the project will receive more funds from the federal government so the rail project can continue.
IntroductionThis is our very first special edition blog post. Today, we are skipping aside from High Speed Rail and going on a fun trip to the smallest country in the world. Vatican City! You might be confused. Vatican City is extremely tiny and it is less than a square kilometre big but believe it or not, Vatican City actually has a railway. HistoryIf you’re good at geography, you might know that Vatican City is located inside Rome. This means that there are railways that come from Rome into Vatican City but these were built much later then the railway that we are talking about. We are talking about the old one built all the way back in 1929. A pope by the name Pope Gregory XVI hated the idea of having a railway from Rome and Italy to Vatican City. He died in 1846 and his successor Pope Pius IX took over. He tried to build a railway but the land he wanted to build it in was seized and the plan was forgotten. Circling back to 1929, The Directorate of New Railway Construction of the Ministry of Public Works of the Kingdom of Italy created a treaty. This treaty allowed Vatican City to build a railway. FactsWe now know how the rail was built so let’s look at other stuff. The rail is 1.19 kilometres long and you only travel a mere 624 metres when riding. On top of this, only one passenger train operates every week on a Saturday meaning that there are only 52 services each year. This service is actually operated as a tour in collaboration with Vatican Museums and the Italian Railway. This isn’t the only thing the line is used for. Many freight trains also come here.
IntroductionThis blog post is about the High Speed Rail of the three Scandinavian countries. First of all we need to find out which countries they are. The three Scandinavian countries are Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The most exciting part of today's blog post will be Denmark as it is the newest. This post will talk about the destinations, history and trains of the Scandinavian High Speed Rail. Denmark's High Speed RailFor an extremely long time, Denmark didn't have High Speed Rail. The Danish government called it the Hour Model and this was the first High Speed link but even before that up to the year 2000, Denmark had other small tracks that came from Germany and Sweden. The Hour Model only began planning in 2013 and 2014 and there were 3 different stages to the construction. The first stage is the most popular one. It is the Copenhagen to Ringsted line which is an new 250 km/h train line between Copenhagen and Ringsted and the first stage will also include the upgrade of the Ringsted to Odense line. This will be in place from 2022. The second stage is from Aarhus to Aalborg which are a bit far from Copenhagen and a long while from Odense. Again, this stage is just upgrading the existing track to high speed rail and trains will be able to run 200 km/h to 250 km/h. The last stage is to connect everything altogether. This means you could take one train from Copenhagen to Aalborg. The last stage will be from Odense to Aarhus. This line is the most expensive and most complex bit of the line to complete and was thought to be started in 2020 but now its even harder and has been pushed back all the way to 2030. Sweden's High Speed RailCurrently, most Swedish trains run at 200 km/h but it isn't really considered as high speed rail. There are 2 series of trains that are allowed to run at 205 km/h but that is all. Other trains are also being considered as the fleet that will be able to run at 305 km/h. Existing track is soon being upgraded from 200 km/h capable to 250 km/h capable meaning existing track will soon be high speed. Other new tracks are being built to be even up to 320 km/h. Norway's High Speed RailCurrently, Norway only has 1 high speed rail link that opened in 1998. It is a 64 kilometre track between Oslo and a little town named Eidsvoll. The train also goes through the airport and acts like a shuttle from the city to the airport. The reason why the government even bothered to create a high speed track is because the airport is 48 kilometres away. Strangely enough, you have to leave the region of Oslo to get to Oslo airport. This soon won't be a lone track in Norway it will be greeted by another track named the Follo line. It is a 22 km tunnel from Oslo to a small suburban city named Ski. Talk about being green, this amazing track will remove 5800 car journeys a day, 750 trucks a day and eliminate more than 5,000 tons of C02 per year!
IntroductionWelcome back. I'm saying this because I haven't uploaded a lot. I will try my best to release a new episode every week. This episode is about Russia's High Speed Rail and the Trans-Siberian Railway. This means this episode will be kinda split into two parts. We are going to see if Russia has a High Speed Rail network and the evolution of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Also, HAPPY HALOWEEN! Does Russia have a High Speed Rail network?Surprisingly, Russia has High Speed Rail. They have many routes that even come from Helsinki in Finland. The different routes that Russia have are the Sapsan train which goes from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the Alstom train which goes from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, the Swift train to Nizhny Novgorod, the Moscow to Berlin Swift train, the Desiro train from St. Petersburg to Veliky Novgorod and the Nevsky express. These are all the different routes of High Speed Rail in Russia. The first one is called the Sapsan train and it is the oldest. The other lines are much, much newer. The History of the Trans-Siberian RailwayThe Trans-Siberian Railway is one of the longest train routes in the world covering all of Russia and even some of China, Mongolia and South Korea. It took a long time, a lot of people and a lot of money to construct the Trans-Siberian Railway. It started construction in 1891 and ended in 1904. This means the link is very old but new routes have been added after its completion. The railway was only built to connect Moscow and the European part of Russia to Siberia. It was hard to transport goods by boat because during the winter, ferry boats were not usable and horses were slow on the iced rivers. Building roads and maniting them would be even harder and nobody wanted to do anything with roads so the only other way was to build a railway. Many projects were proposed and even different ones were all declined and took them 10 years to finally find a project everybody wanted. A European financer named Baron Henri Hottinguer who said the project would cost 35 million pounds. To create the rail network, 62,000 men were hired. What the Trans-Siberian is nowAfter over 100 years, the network had some changes. The route goes from Moscow to Vladivostok which are both in Russia but the rail goes through Beijing and Mongolia as well. (Vladivostok is at the very edge of Russia next to Japan). New tours and routes by different companies are being made all the time. One company is selling a ticket to the Trans-Siberian and is also saying they have luxury cabins and everything. Sadly, there are a lot of fake scams and the safest is to buy your ticket at the Moscow station a few days before. Because I don't live there, I can't tell you the price but the Sapsan train is very cheap. It is only around $200 per person two ways.
IntroductionEurostar is a huge part of Europe's High Speed Rail but if you see actually how big the network is, you'll be surprised. Eurostar doesn't have a very large network and it is only located in 4 countries. Britain, France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The main link is from London to Paris but before we talk about the routes, stations and all other things, let's talk about who created the link and when it first opened. The tunnel between the English Channel first got to work in 1974 but got aborted and was restarted in 1986. It was in planning for two years until it started construction in 1988. The tunnel took a long time to finish and finished in 1993. How It StartedThe tunnel wasn't touched by trains for a year and the first service was on the 14th of November 1994 and it ran from London Waterloo International Station to Paris Gare du Nord in France and to Brussels in Belgium. In 1995, Eurostar trains were going as high as 171.5 km/h and in 1996 a second station, Ashford International opened. This meant that people could come from 2 different stations in London. In 2007, people now came from London St Pancras instead of Waterloo because they needed to refurbish the station. Not many things were done after that. Now let's look at the records. The English Channel tunnel has the longest bit of underwater track. In Britain, a Eurostar train went 334 km/h and that was the fastest in all of Britain. Regional FranceThe train from London can take 3 turns. One to Paris, one to Belgium and the Netherlands and one to regional France. They go through Disneyland and at Lyon station, the train can turn to go to Marseille or Bourg-St-Maurice where the train finally terminates. The full service takes 7 hours and 51 minutes. The line opened at the same time as all the other routes and is the route that has the least amount of records and milestones so many people don't acknowledge this route. It is also the least used past Disneyland. I also love that Disneyland gets its own station! The Rest of ItThere isn't much after that except for Belgium and the Netherlands. What I love about the Eurostar is that everything starts in London and then the train takes a route to either Paris, France or Belgium and the Netherlands. Belgium has the station Brussels and Antwerp and the London train turns after Lille station. It goes past the Belgium-Netherlands border and arrives in Rotterdam and then Amsterdam where it goes back to London and starts the route again. The CostsI'm going to save you the pain of looking online for tickets and do it myself so you can use the information. The price comes in a few different ways. The cheapest tickets from London to Paris are the earliest trains and latest trains between Tuesday and Friday. The standard ticket for the first, second and last route is 85 euros or $134. All other times are 102 euros or $161 one way. To go to Regional France, there are only 2 - 3 trains per day and each ticket is approximately 150 euros or $237. The last route is London to Amsterdam. Each ticket is around 100 euros to $170. The Eurostar also has different classes but for a 2 hour trip I don't think it's worth it. ImagesImage 1 is a map of the rail link, Image 2 is an image of the train, Image 3 is the Business Lounge you get access to if you have a Business Premier ticket and Image 4 is and image of the station, London St Pancras.
IntroductionIt's been quite a while since I did my last post. I'm very sorry for the long delay. Before we get started, let me tell you about the exciting new things I will be talking about in this season. I will be talking about China's High Speed Rail, Amtrak (America's Regional Rail) and Eurostar (Europe's High Speed Rail Network). Once all of those topics have been concluded I will move onto Season 3. Now let's get started. In today's blog post, I will talk about the trains that have been used on the Japanese High Speed Rail Network and the upcoming projects that have been planned and have already started construction. The TrainsIn the first part of this mini-series, I told you about the first few trains. I will start from the 300 series Shinkansen train. The 300 Series was first introduced in 1992. They were constructed between 1990 and 1998 and they scraped the trains between 2007 and 2012. The last one ended its service that year. These trains actually replaced the 100 series and ran on the first two lines that opened. The Sanyo and Tokaido lines. Next is the 400 Series. This is a very stylish train. It had a pointy, grey nose, grey body and a green stripe along the body. They came into operation only 4 months after the 300 series and got scraped in 2010. It was used in the Yamagata Mini-Shinkansen line. They were constructed from 1992 - 1995, got refurbished between 1999 - 2001 and got scraped between 2008 and 2010. The next series is the 500 series. This train only ran on the Sanyo line. It came into service, replacing the 0 series and started operation in 1997 it is still in operation to this day. The train got built between 1995 and 1998. Sadly, only 9 of these trains have ever been made but they had some of the coolest livires I've seen on a train. Let's move on from the 0-9 series to the E series. The next train is the E5 Series. If you have ever been or lived in Japan you have seen this train. It's that weirdly shaped nose, green train. They started operation in 2011, started construction from 2009 till now and haven't been refurbished. They are used on the Tohoku and Hokkaido Shinkansen lines. Upcoming Project 1 - The Chuo LineThis is my favourite line of all! This is my favourite line because its powered by Maglev. Maglev is a rail link that goes from Tokyo to Osaka. The line between Tokyo to Nagoya will open in 2027. It will then be extended to Osaka in 2045. The Tokyo to Nagoya part has been under construction since 2014 and the part to Osaka is still under planning. This maglev technology means that trains will be able to float on the track and go to speeds of up to 800 km/h. Instead of waiting 2.5 hours to use the Tokaido line, the Chuo line will take just 67 minutes. The line cost $67 billion dollars for 290 km of track. Only to Nagoya!! Upcoming Project 2 - The Hokkaido LineThe Hokkaido Line is another upcoming project. This is a half-half project because the first part is already opened. This part of the line goes from Shin-Aomori to Shin-Hakodate and it opened in 2016. The second part of the line will go from Hakodate to Sapporo which is the main city of the island of Hokkaido. This part of the line is the latest line to open and will open in 2030. In the paragraph about the trains above, I told you about the E5 series. The green train. This train will be mainly used on this line and is why JR (the Japanese rail company), made the trains in the first place. Picture 1 - E5 series train
Picture 2 - 300 series train Picture 3 - 400 series train Picture 4 - 500 series train with special body Picture 5 - 500 series train Picture 6 - Hokkaido Line |
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