UYUNI – Bolivia’s train cemetery

From ciannaphoto.

Follow me, o reader, as we wander into one of the most bizarre landscapes this planet has to offer. This is a train cemetery located a few kilometers outside of Uyuni, a smallish city in the south of Bolivia.

 

The setting is wide open spaces, deep blue skies and clouds rolling in and out faster than wild horses, ever changing the colors and the contrasts. Young couples come here to find a little privacy away from peering eyes. Small groups of people play the most classic of games: hide and seek. Children of all ages clamber up, down, into and out of these hundreds of rusting locomotives and cars, many of which are well over 100 years old.

The wider picture. This sad, litter-strewn landscape is what the train cemetery looks like from just a few steps away.

Full post here.

Very easy to imagine that this is what the endgame of humanity will look like, except this may be the optimistic version. We ran out of fuel and our garbage is everywhere. Pure poetry. And all watched over by rusted machines of loving grace. (apologies to Richard Brautigan).

 

 

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Fast Buses To Ferry In Suburbanites During Turcot Build

The MTQ continues to put on a dazzling display of incompetence and profound misunderstanding of basic sustainable transit by planning to have fast buses bring people in and out of the West Island during the Turcot Build. All the expropriations, all the disturbances of neighborhoods, all the construction traffic nightmares and the entire raison d’etre of their Turcot plan was keyed on the idea that traffic on the main highways would never have to stop. Irony abounds.

Photo: David Boily, La Presse

Story in Cyberpresse

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The Pimento Report #26 Last Train To Rigaud

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At Lucien L’Allier

The folks from Train de L’Ouest were handing out flyers on Tuesday at the whatchamacallit train station, you know, that little hallway on one side of the hockey arena, and asking people to sign a petition. You can sign it here.
One of the first things you see when you come up from the Metro is the raging glory of the dumbest development in the history of the city, if not the whole country – building a hockey arena between commuter lines and a fully functional classic old train station. Do you want even dumber? One suggested project would be to build a train station south of Windsor station and bend these tracks over to that location! And people wonder why Montreal can’t get it’s transportation act together – sometimes you just have to laugh…

I have to admit that while these statues of hockey heroes work well in this plaza and do tell a huge tale of past greatness on the ice, they make me miss the old Forum.

Getting the word out.


Clifford Lincoln.

I walked around this area just to see what was there, get a feel for it, the massive effort that went in to this whole project and I could only draw one surrealistic conclusion-

Like I said, sometimes you just have to laugh…

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Airport Train A White Elephant?

That’s the question Henry Aubin is asking in his column this week. And it’s a good one considering that the “747″ airport to downtown express bus has been a great success, more than doubling the anticipated ridership in just a couple of months. The whole concept of an express train from the airport to downtown has been flogged to death for decades and there still isn’t a consensus even if the City has recently stated a preference for the Central Station (CN) option instead of Lucien L’Allier (CP). Perhaps it’s time we threw in the towel on this one and just started focusing on improving rail transit to the West Island and beyond. Mr. Aubin points out that the new Turcot will (at least it should) include an express bus lane which will make the airport trip quick and painless, especially during rush hours. It’s always good to connect the dots in this way, something all transportation plans we have seen from all areas of government and private developers in recent years have spectacularly failed to do.
The airport bus just makes a lot of sense and saves millions and millions of dollars in just track that need not be laid. Heck, it s probably already showing a profit.

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Airport Shuttle Not Enough: Group

Article by Andy Riga in the Gazette suggests that there is no point in building an airport/downtown train that does not also serve residents along the way. No other city does that and considering that the infrastructure money coming from the fed and Quebec will probably be a one shot deal, it might be a good idea to come up with a better solution that intergrates commuter transit for West Islanders.

Airport shuttle not enough: group
If Quebec and Ottawa have $400 million to spend on rail service, it should go to commuter trains for Montrealers, not an airport shuttle for travellers, a new coalition says.

“Ordinary folks who pay the taxes should come first,” said Clifford Lincoln, who is coordinating the new coalition of mayors, business leaders and commuter and environmental groups.

Lincoln, an ex-West Island MNA and MP, said the coalition met for the first time Thursday, the day Mayor Gerald Tremblay came out in support of a $600-million shuttle that would run between Trudeau Airport and downtown’s Central Station. That plan, touted by Aeroports de Montreal, the airport authority, would need $400 million in government money, half each from Ottawa and Quebec.

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Train Crossing In Saint Henri

Actually looking from Les Tanneries. You just don’t see cars and people stopped for a train in too many places in the city these days. And invoking the Old Fart Clause (means it’s my blog and I can reminisce all I want, heh heh) I will say that I can remember when going from Verdun to Downtown often meant you had to wait for a train on Atwater. As a kid it was fun and as an adult you kind of hoped you would beat it. There was no Metro in those days and at rush hour the buses were packed like sardines which could be very uncomfortable in the middle of summer. There is much more comfort and speed in the city today, but less interaction and patience.

I don’t know if there are many crossings like this left on the Island but it could make an interesting photography project.

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