MetaFilter posts tagged with transportation and travel

Pluck

aniola — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:36:13 -0800

Prior to their southward migration, the godwits eat up large, until up to 55 per cent of their body weight is fat. They then reduce the size of their gut, kidney and liver by up to 25 per cent to compensate for the added weight. Godwits are amazing migratory shorebirds who travel many thousands of miles at a go. Here's a brief documentary of people studying them (12 minutes on youtube + ad, shows invasive surgery). Here's some science on their flights (creative commons). Here's people celebrating their flight (farewell, upcoming arrival). Here's Godwit sex (yt) and the sounds of Godwits (Hudsonian, Marbled, Black-tailed, Bar-tailed). Tangent: Here's a 2009 MeFi post on bird sounds in case you missed it.

Historical Travel Menus From Northwestern's Transportation Library

Rykey — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:58:53 -0800

Food and drink menus from the international airlines, railways, and cruise ships of decades past (Click "Digital Images" link in each carrier's thread). Courtesy of the Northwestern University Transportation Library's Menu Collection. [Via]

Sari fashion photography

Trurl — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:29:12 -0800

Sari fashion photography (related) Because of the harsh extremes in temperature on the Subcontinent, the sari fills a practical role as well as a decorative one. It is not only warming in winter and cooling in summer, but its loose-fitting tailoring is preferred by women who must be free to move as their duties require. For this reason, it is the costume of choice of air hostesses on Air India.

Stewardess Uniform Collection

Trurl — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 16:51:55 -0800

In the seven years since its last^* appearance in the blue, Cliff Muskiet's Stewardess Uniform Collection has grown to more than 1,000 different uniforms from more than 400 different airlines. Strangely missing: the saris of Air India

The World's Largest Model Airport

Trurl — Thu, 12 May 2011 19:01:52 -0800

Frederik and Gerrit Braun, energetic twin brothers with no shortage of dreams, have just finished construction of the world’s largest model airport. With 40,000 lights, 15,000 figurines, 500 cars, 10,000 trees, 50 trains, 1000 wagons, 100 signals, 200 switches, 300 buildings and 40 planes, Knuffingen Airport is both a wonder to behold as well as a technological tour de force. The best part of Knuffingen is that it’s alive. Forty planes and 90 vehicles move about autonomously.

Trains, the future, and the past

Namlit — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:08:57 -0800

The US government is trying to blow life into the railroad's passenger services which have been declining since WWII because of production stops during the war, and government sponsoring afterward going primarily to air travel and roads. Meanwhile the French SNCF is going public in catching up with its dark past, in order to get a piece of the investment cake.

American railways

kliuless — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:49:20 -0800

High-speed railroading
America's system of rail freight is the world's best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it NB: could; I would think that with proper implementation both passengers and freight should be able to peacefully coexist (despite the objections of big R.R. ;) that is all!

Bicycle Highways

hortense — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:45:44 -0800

Copenhagen: Come see "the busiest bicycling street in the Western world", and lots of other you-gotta-see-them-to-believe-them features including bike counters (featuring digital readouts), LEDS, double bike lanes (for passing) and giant hot pink cars. Bicycle Highways may be coming to your town. Copenhagenize, Amsterdamize, Via via

We go from the ground to the mountain, baby! Without walking!

wintersweet — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:29:37 -0800

The funicular railway is a kind of cable-based railway that gives me great joy because of its peculiar shape and its uselessness for doing anything other than what it does. A funicular carriage is generally stairstepped or terraced, so you can't repurpose these cars for other uses. They generally work in a particular way, too, as pairs: one goes up the mountain, one comes down the mountain! Maybe this kind of glee is why they seem to be especially popular in Japan today, where they can be taken to many popular sightseeing areas--but a fair number of funicular railway riders are probably there for the journey, not the destination. You can go on a pilgrimage to the numinous group of peaks called Kōyasan (here's a video of the trip there) via the Kōyasan Cable, which even accepts payment by smart card. You can take the Mitake Tozan Mountain Railway not too far from Tokyo and do some fine hiking in the Chichibu Tama Kai National Park (video trip). In the famous sightseeing region of Hakone, you can start your journey on the modern-looking Hakone Tozan Cable Car, defying the generally old-fashioned vibe (you complete your trip up to Lake Ashi on a ropeway, and once you get to the lake you can hop on a replica of the HMS Victory or 17th-century French warship Soleil Royal no I am not even kidding). Then there's the Kintetsu Ikoma Cable Line. The dog car, named Bull, and the cat car, named Mike, are on the Hōzanji line to the Buddhist temple Hōzanji. (Another Flickr user notes that some people use these trains as part of their normal commute.) The music-themed Do-Re-Mi car and the cake-themed Sweet car go to the amusement park Skyland Ikoma on the Ikoma line. Compared to these four, the two cars on Hōzanji Line 2 look positively normal. There are probably a couple dozen funiculars in Japan, so...more where those came from! (They even have cool looking tickets--more here.) In the videos above you can see the "passing track" style, where a single track is used for most of the course but there's a kind of "mouth" area where the two cars pass each other on two tracks. Other systems may use parallel tracks. For zillions more strangely hypnotic Japanese funicular railway videos, see this Youtube search results page. (Yes, those katakana spell "cable car", basically. Although they're two somewhat different things in English, they're the same thing in Japanese. There's a note about this on the Japanese Wikipedia entry, and another link is provided for San Francisco cable car seekers.) There's not enough space to address funiculars all over the world, but I'll add a few general notes: The name comes from Latin for "rope." Many of the now-closed ones in the US (where they're often called inclines or incline railroads) and elsewhere were used to get into mines, but they've also been used to move ships. The steepest passenger railway in the world, the Katoomba Scenic Railway in Blue Mountains, Australia, is a funicular railway, as is supposedly-the-shortest and supposedly-soon-to-return-to-operation, Angels Flight in Los Angeles, USA. There's also a funicular that may be the oldest railway in the world, the Reiszug in Austria, which dates to the 1500s and is now run by motor--a lot older than this 1920s one from Japan! They're found in many other places in the world. There are many in South America (most notably Valparaiso, Chile), some in other parts of Asia (though not Korea for some reason, as far as I can tell), and particularly in Switzerland, Italy, and other hilly and mountainous areas of Europe, where Michel has blogged his photos for you. Apparently they were pretty popular in the Soviet Union, too. For details on how they operate, you can read the nitty-gritty of funicular function at the Sweden-based funiculars.net. You may even know a song about funiculars! The 1880 song "Funiculì, Funiculà," is about the opening of the funicular on Mount Vesuvius (no, really!) which had to be shut down in 1944 after repeated eruptions caused problems. And yes, that's where the headline on this post comes from. Here, for no apparent reason, is a children's chorus, Luciano Pavarotti, and Aqua (yes, THAT Aqua) performing "Funiculì, Funiculà."

Readers' Travels

Kattullus — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:44:41 -0800

I know a man who once went to Sioux City, not one of the world’s leading destinations, precisely because he had never been there before. More than a decade later he still talks about the experience, from the Sergeant Floyd obelisk to the dog track of North Sioux and the meat packing plant converted to a shopping mall. The same impulse explains a non-specialist’s reading a history of Byzantine iconography or a survey of Australian wildlife. Both offer a break in daily life and an enlargement of our sense of wonder and possibility. That awareness can provide a sense of transcendence, and connection, or even the spark of divine discontent that leads people to change their lives.

Reading as Vacation, an essay by J. D. Smith and Subway Reader, pictures of people who read while using public transportation.

Hell's Gate and Beyond

Miko — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:00:40 -0800

Maritime New York

Bike Hacks

brain_drain — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:32:42 -0800

Bike Hacks! Bored with your generic two-wheeler? Check out this collection of funky bicycle modifications. My favorite is the grocery cart.

Rotel = Red, Rolling Hotel

Turtle — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 06:04:56 -0800

Rotel (German) is a way to travel the world and go off the beaten track without leaving the comfort of your... bus. Some of the buses are in two parts, so the accommodation trailer can be left behind for day trips, and some are four-wheel drive, to go off-road. More pics: Algeria, Mongolia, Argentina, Serengeti. Those goofy buses remind me of the Red Couch. More inside.

Antique road trip

KirkJobSluder — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:29:35 -0800

One of my joys of going on vacation is to get off the interstate and collect a bit of an old historic road. In California over the weekend we managed to grab a bit of Hwy. 1 aka the Pacific Coast Highway past nature preserves, resorts and neighborhoods. Another goal is to do all of U.S. 50, the initial stages of which were reportedly surveyed by George Washington during his tour in the British Army. Wired has a nice article about how a journalist and a photographer ignored the advice of a Federal Highway Administration spokesperson to take a trip down Route 1 from Maine to Florida.

On a wing & a rail - global transportation

madamjujujive — Sun, 10 Aug 2003 07:17:25 -0800

Transportation around the world is a huge database of photos focusing on two topics: transportation mode and geography. From bullet trains to dogsleds and camel caravans to tramways, - browse by location or by topic. Also related: One of the best transportation museums in the world is the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz in Lucern, Switzerland. (via booknotes)

It's fun to watch your tax dollars put politicians in office.

the fire you left me — Wed, 23 Oct 2002 14:22:57 -0800

It's fun to watch your tax dollars put politicians in office. "Cheney has been the White House road warrior this year, hauling in more than $22 million for Republicans in 74 campaign appearances"