tomment » transport and travel

New (W/Y)ork

tom — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:26:25 +0000

I was recently lucky enough to spend a week working in New York City.. here are some pics from the trip.

A sample:

Information systems are complicated according to First Capital Connect

tom — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:22:20 +0000

I recently wrote to First Capital Connect, who manage the railway station at Loughborough Junction. I wrote because the so-called real time train information is frequently incorrect for services operated by train companies other than FCC. I regularly catch Southeastern trains from this station, and while the trains are routinely late, the display will continue to show ‘on time’ at all times, regardless of the delay.

I understood that we operate a national rail network and I expect the signalling and train running information to be standard across the network. Apparently not so, according to FCC who tell me that data would need to be provided to them manually by Southeastern if it is to be included on their displays. I was particularly consoled by the closing line of FCC’s reply:

Unfortunately information systems are very complicated, we will continue to look at ways to improve our services but we have to be realistic about these goals.

Curiously Canadian

tom — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:10:52 +0000

Last week I returned from a trip to Canada and New York. It was great and the autumn colours were incredible. Here are some photographic highlights:

Montreal’s biosphere:

A sunset over the Hudson river, viewed from the Adirondack train between Montreal and New York (for reference, possibly the most picturesque train journey ever at this time of year):

A vote Obama mural in New York:

See the full lot here.

bikes on trains – now book online!

tom — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:47:11 +0000

Three years ago I ranted about the inability to make reservations for cycles on thetrainline.com. Long distance rail operators insist that cyclists make a reservation for their bicycle in advance of travelling, but in order to do this one must reserve tickets by telephone or physically at a station.

GNER have changed all this. Today they launched (into some sort of beta test) their new online ticketing facility. I am pleased to report that in the final stages of booking you can now select ‘bicycle space’ and then make a bicycle reservation.

Magic.

And remind me again quite why this rail company (the only rail company with even an ounce of sense) just lost their franchise?

north west scotland: i like

tom — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:07:51 +0000

Sarah and I just returned from an excellent trip to North West Scotland. Sutherland and Wester Ross and thoroughly recommended.

My photos are available. Some highlights include:

Scottish figs:

Award winning beaches:

Smoo Caves:

Generally incredible views:

See the whole lot..

**update** Sarah describes the trip in extensive detail here

Cool Camping

tom — Mon, 28 May 2007 19:45:12 +0000

The bank holiday weekend took us on a long weekend break to the Isle of Wight. We opted to stay at in Brighstone at a camp site that Sarah once took an extended break at as a child.

It just so happens that this camp site, beautifully situated at the edge of a cliff at the southern end of the island, comes highly recommended by Cool Camping. For those unaware, this recent publication has reminded many people of the joys of camping. As a side effect, it has also made camping accessible to followers of Hip Hotels and other such coffee table books. Not that this is a bad thing, per se, but this was definitely the first time I have seen somebody buffing the alloys of their SUV on a camp site:

Those who were not asleep this weekend will know that the UK weather wasn’t really cut out for camping, least of all our chosen destination on the Isle of Wight, which attracted the largest rainfall in the country (over 2 inches in 12 hours, and that isn’t taking into account that it had already been raining solid for 12 hours prior to that..). This, combined with winds gusting up to Gale Force 8 (or 9 depending on who you ask), meant that some of our cool camping friends didn’t have such a cool time.

Over night, the majority of our neighbours left. Some left, abandoning their tents and possessions:

Maybe those behemoth tents aren’t such a good idea afterall. At least, not when camped on the edge of a cliff.

(pictures courtesy of Sarah)

a right on bus

tom — Sat, 19 May 2007 12:17:10 +0000

It’s not quite clear how anybody manages to crash so square onto the corner of a building.

This one happened on the corner of Gresham Road and Coldharbour Lane in South East London.

bikes on trains

tom — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:53:04 +0000

No time to blog properly, other than to say that this campaign is critically important, and should be of interest to anybody who uses or might use the combination of bicycle and train:

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4801

Good.

most transported

tom — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:47:36 +0000

I have recently been analysing some National Statistics data taken from the 2001 census. I was pleased to observe that Lambeth, the local authority region that I live in, has the highest proportion of journeys to work made by public transport (over 58%) in the UK. It also has the fifth lowest rate of two car households.

what you looking at?

tom — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:02:47 +0000

There’s more to see in the missing photos department. I even thought these pictures had gone missing during the move from one laptop to another, but I found them backed up.

Here we have a moderate sized gallery of pictures from our adventure across Denmark in September. The route took us to Newcastle, Gothenburg (by ferry), Copenhagen (by train) then by bike to Esbjerg, and ferry to Harwich.

That’s enough catch-up. Future posts might be more relevant to the current time!