The snowfall from a snow-laden (from a snowfall) train is somewhat predictable—and so can be somewhat controlled, suggests this study: “Studies of Snow-Dropping from a Train on a Turnout due to Dynamic Excitations,” Tiia-Riikka Loponen, Pekka Salmenperä, Heikki Luomala, and Antti Nurmikolu, Journal of Cold Regions Engineering, vol. 32, no. 2, June 2018. The authors, […]
Tag: train
Books to train your brain to suchandsuch or thisandthat
If you want to buy a book to try to train your brain to do something, you have many somethings and many books to choose from. Here’s a sampling: Train Your Brain to be a Genius, by John Woodward, 2009. Train Your Brain to Get Thin: Prime Your Gray Cells for Weight Loss, Wellness, and […]
Ambitious railway plans
Who does not love an ambitious railway plan? The Guardian reports about a report about Chinese “plans to build a high-speed railway line to the US: The proposed line would begin in north-east China and run up through Siberia, pass through a tunnel underneath the Pacific Ocean then cut through Alaska and Canada to reach […]
They trained chickens to play baseball, and then some
Psychologist B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning work inspired the work of Marian Breland Bailey. Bailey’s work inspired this study: “Marian Breland Bailey: The Mouse Who Reinforced,” John N. Marr, Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 59-79. Marr writes: Marian and her first husband, Keller Breland, had become the most experienced and accomplished […]
Improbable TV: Tay Bridge Disaster recited on a train on the bridge
Here’s a new episode of the Improbable Research TV series. It’s the 4th of many episodes featuring the bad poetry of William Topaz McGonagall. (For no good reason at all, we are releasing this 4th episode before we release the 3rd episode.) William Topaz McGonagall, who died in 1902, is widely regarded as the worst poet […]
Railway-collision ejection-capsule
In case two trains were about to collide head-on, this emergency ejection capsule would allow at least one person, likely the train engineer, to escape. The scheme was described in a magazine article in 1915. The blog Technologia Obsoleta spotlighted it recently. BONUS: An alternate solution, devised by Flann O’Brien
Sunday: Tay Bridge poem reading on the Train
Join us on Sunday morning, March 20 for a historic group reading — on a train crossing the Tay Bridge, perhaps the first time this has ever been accomplished — of William Topaz McGonagall’s most famous bad poem, The Tay Bridge Disaster, Here are the poem’s stirring opening lines: “Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry […]
From satire to proposal in 120 years
Ptak Science Books found an apparently serious engineering proposal that echoes a satire done more than 100 years earlier: John B. Prather launched an idea in 1945 for building a high-speed pneumatic passenger/freight train connecting New York City to Philadelphia. [It’s described in his] New York-Philadelphia Vacuum Tunnel, Preliminary Design Features and Economic Analysis… One […]
London to Edinburgh in 5 minutes
The journey between London and Edinburgh would be much quicker had the London and Edinburgh Vacuum Tunnel Company been allowed and able to build a breathtaking new piece of technology, back when land was cheap and all things seemed possible. The 29 January, 1825 issue of The Mechanics Register presents the scheme in detail: “The […]
Curing shyness for dogs (2): Gunfire
In this second episode in our deniably-popular Curing Shyness in Dogs series, to entertain you and your dog, and perhaps cure one or both of you of various ailments, we examine, distantly, this Master’s Voice Productions-produced set of CDs. This entertainment and/or cure is, the manufacturer says, “the result of two years of studies, planning […]