It’s Micro Monday again. While the podcast is on hiatus, I’ve been doing a series of roll calls to help enthusiasts find each other. This week’s topic is trains. Railfans, station lovers, and ferroequinologists, signal your enthusiasm with a comment here.
@jean One of the first moments our family knew the pandemic was going to have long-term consequences was when we had to cancel our much anticipated west coast Amtrak trip. We will reschedule one day! ♥️ 🚊
@jean 🚆 lover here. I just completed a customer project writing code for a train project (which is sadly just about all I can tell about it in public but it was one of the coolest projects in my professional career).
@fgtech Same. I had some credit sitting in my Deutsche Bahn account from 2019 that I was planning to use in 2020. Not a ton, but enough for Ljubljana > Munich.
@jean I’m a fan in theory, but have travelled the same ~8h distances in my country so many times, that I have a love/dislike relationship with them. 🚂
@jean does it count if we want to be but our current system is atrocious, but we are an advocate for making it good?
@toddgrotenhuis I live in Kentucky, where I believe passenger rail is nonexistent, so this had better count!!!
@odd Bergen line? Visiting the Finse station in winter is high on my itinerary list if/when I travel to Norway.
@jean Count me in. I'd never heard of “ferroequinologists” before, but put me in a train station and I'm at a home away from home! 🛤
@jean We don't have trains in Hawaii, save for an old Sugar Cane train. I've always loved rail and used ride up and down the coast a lot in So. Cal in the 80s. We also used a lot of train travel on our last trip to Europe and plan on using train travel in Italy next summer,
@jean Oh yay, a roll call that really does fit me! 😇 I'm a big advocate of trains (and other public transport, but for high-capacity or long-distance you can't go past trains). I don't drive so I get a lot of use out of Melbourne's network. Have caught them in many other places around the world too 😊
My dad's side of the family is something of a "railway family", so I've grown up being raised on a lot of the history of Victorian Railways… and of course, as a kid, going on all the Steamrail special trips 😂 So yes, trains are definitely something I care about.
@jean Hooray for trains! Coincidentally, I’m writing this while waiting for a tour to start at a railway museum. 🚂
@toddgrotenhuis I swear, every time I visit a city with even a mediocre light rail system (Salt Lake, Minneapolis), I dislike Indy just a little bit more.
Then I walk around downtown and am like “Ok. This is fine after all.”
Still. Want rail - even a little!
@v This is funny, i live in Austin, and I dont think you can even call what we have a "system", but we talk all the time about how great it would be to live in a town with real mass transit. We've spent considerable time in Boston, San Francisco, and Washington DC and it makes one jealous to say the least.
@jean i thought it was just me! i'm very fond of trains - and train journeys. i'll have to remember to take a picture on my journey up north next week 🚂
@jasraj I have a series of clips that are just me recording the view out the window passing by, with train sounds. Stringing them together for a relaxing, meditative video is little project I let fall by the wayside...
@jean I don’t know if you are able to watch this, (because of location limitations), but this is a real-time trip on Bergensbanen, (The Bergen Line). There are others our national broadcaster, (NRK), also have recorded.
@odd I’ve just added Bergen > Oslo to my train bucket list. It’s a little short, but maybe there is a longer journey I should check out?
@jean I think that might be the most visually appealing one, if you don’t count the much shorter again Flåmsbanen/Flåmsbana ~1h. There are five main lines in Norway, Sørlandsbanen (Oslo-Stavanger), Bergensbanen (Oslo-Bergen), Dovrebanen (Oslo-Trondheim), Rørosbanen (also Oslo-Trondheim), and Nordlandsbanen (Trondheim-Bodø).
You could take a train from Bodø, change trains in Trondheim, then change again in Oslo, and go to Bergen, (or Stavanger), and that would take about 24h i believe, and with a short stop for re-boarding at the line ends. (Or the opposite direction).
Here is an extensive (but hard to read) list of all railway lines in Norway. When I grew up in Trøndelag, our house were a stone throw away from the Hell-Storlien(Sweden) line.
@richText Ha, that’s cool! When someone I know travel by plane I usually track their flight on Flightradar24. (Same-same, but different). 😃
@jean Sorry, it was a bit obscure. There’s an expression, “un ‘tiens’ vaut mieux que deux ‘tu l’auras’”: one “here, take this” is worth more than two promises that you’ll have it in the future. Martial Solal, who wrote that tune, liked puns and wordplay and substituted “train” for “tiens”. I suppose puns don’t translate well, though.
I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a train enthusiast, but after having my first son, I learned more about trains than I ever thought I would! He loves trains and knows the different types and loves learning about how they work and the signals, tracks, routes, etc. He is turning 6 next week and we are celebrating with a Polar Express Party! (This will be his third birthday celebrated with trains!)
@jean not micromonday and this is an old thread i know, but I used to love in Japan and worked as a translator for some of the train lines in Greater Tokyo; I'll continue blogging about new developments on trains in Japan sometimes so if anyone is interested just give me a follow.
@starrwulfe Cool. The Japanese rail system is legend. I know we have Japanophiles here on Micro.blog in addition to the ferrophiles. And no worries, these threads are here open for replies whenever someone finds them. Micro.blog conversations take place over days, weeks, even years. 😇
@jean We sought out the new train in Florida, Brightline, and my family are now big fans of train travel. We look forward to the next phase which will connect Orlando to Miami.
@gilcreque Oh that’s cool. I grew up in Miami. We took the train to Jacksonville when I was 5. And I went to Washington DC with my 7th grade class. Overnight trains were magical. But Orlando wasn’t much back then. There absolutely should be a train now. That would be great.