Riding the rails in Bangladesh

This is a chaotic and at times faintly alarming trip down a rail line in Bangladesh. The line is actually not in use, it was closed some 20 years ago, and this is a maintenance carriage checking the tracks. The tracks are covered with straw and other debris and livestock are tied to it. People have to run ahead to clear them.

It is a trip through rural Bangladesh. There used to be a ferry at its end by the river. A newer track with a bridge has replaced it. In the comments there is a lot of nostalgia over this route, people fondly remembering riding the train in their youth.

 

A railroader's cafe

Above is an old trade video promoting railroads. Rather than the usual shots of railroads driving hither and yon accompanied by cheerful music and a chipper narration, this video delivers its message via a scripted presentation. 

The video is set in a cafe that the railroaders all gather in after their shifts. It features a spunky waitress, a short order cook who is a font of railroad statistics, several off-duty railroaders and a mysterious stranger who we would never guess is the reporter writing the upcoming story about railroads they're all discussing.  

Altogether the staff and cliental of the place seem oddly obsessed over trains, but I guess it gets its message across.

 

Railroad crossings

We've all sat at railroad crossings watching a train go by. I'm always struck by the fact that the graffiti artists are generally careful to avoid painting over logos, reporting marks, and other codes on the cars. It is a dance between the railroad companies and the graffiti painters. One thing I don't think about is how the crossing signals work, I just take them for granted. The above video discusses that, and it is interesting what they have to do to get the whole process to work properly.  

 

Boynton’s Bicycle Railroad

Click any image to enlarge 

In the 1880s Eben Moody Boynton acquired an old set of railroad tracks on Long Island running between Gravesend and Coney Island. He used this set of tracks to create the Boynton’s Bicycle Railroad which started operation in 1890. It was the first monorail. The locomotive and cars sat atop a single line of wheels and were stabilized by an overhead guiding beam. The train was narrow, allowing both tracks of the conventional rail line to be used at the same time. It operated for two years.

Eben Moody Boynton

Clearing the tracks after a derailment

On September 15th of this year a Union Pacific train derailed. This is a time-lapse of the effort to clear the tracks. The two cranes working in tandem to lift the cars and engines is a pretty amazing feat of coordination.

  

Riding on neglected rails

Above is a video of a train crawling along a poorly maintained stretch of track. That got me wondering, especially with legislation about infrastructure repair on the horizon, what is the ownership of railroad tracks -- public or private?

It turns out railroad tracks are privately owned. I guess the whole issue of land grants to RR companies back in the 19th century should have been a clue to me about that fact. Regardless, the laws surrounding RR tracks must be complex. I suppose trains from other companies must have to lease time to travel on tracks, and who knows how RR right-of-ways impact local zoning, etc.

It seems like a railroad would be a utility, but I guess they are something different.

This section of neglected railroad track is owned by Pioneer RailCorp. They bought it from Maumee and Western Railroad and, from the comment accompanying the video, Pioneer had upgraded most of the rest of the track they had bought from Maumee and Western. This little section sure looks harrowing to run on.
 

Riding the rails

Take a trip on an English private railroad. The description says it is the "largest ...  railway of its size" which seems like an odd wording. Could referring to myself as the "largest person of my size" make any sense?

Anyway, that quibble aside, it is an amazing toy. Chugging around on it looks like a hoot and the grounds are quite beautiful.