On Journey, Young Tunisians Need Only a Final Destination

FROM: The New York Times

DATE: 19/04/2011

AUTHOR: Steven Erlanger

VENTIMIGLIA, Italy — In the American Bar, across the square from the train station here, they have had enough. “The Tunisians are everywhere,” the waitress said. “It’s been like this for a month. They sleep in the station and on the streets, and we’ve lost a lot of customers.”

Mara Scasso, an emergency room nurse, said she had never seen so many police officers in this western edge of Italy, on the French border. “Helping the refugees is a moral duty,” she said. “But here we have one of the highest unemployment rates in Italy; it’s a dead zone. I don’t see how we can help them.”

Thirty yards away, about 70 young Tunisian men sat around the lip of a dry fountain in Piazza Battisti, drinking coffee, asking for money and giving interviews. Some of them have been sent between Italy and France several times, and the police and immigration officers carefully monitor the trains and stations on the Riviera tourist route between Nice, Menton and Ventimiglia, stopping every young man who looks Tunisian.These young men — there are no women — are a kind of Ping-Pong ball in a French-Italian political soap opera: economic migrants from a newly free but chaotic Tunisia who have dared the seas to find opportunity in a European Union that does not want them.

Italy has started issuing temporary six-month residence permits to Tunisians who arrived before April 5, saying that European Union rules under the Schengen treaty, which allows passport-free travel, would let them travel into France and elsewhere. The French are turning many of them back if they lack other documentation or sufficient money, or if they simply cannot satisfactorily explain, at least to officials, the nature and duration of their visit. As a French policeman in the Nice train station said of the permits, “The Italians have created a beautiful stupidity.”

But the Italians feel put upon, given their proximity to Tunisia and the arrival of some 25,700 Tunisian refugees this year, and they are worried about an even larger influx from Libya. They are asking for “European solidarity” from a European Union that has no uniform policy on economic migrants, refugees or even political asylum, and some Italian politicians have even threatened, idly, to quit the European Union if it does not help Italy with the influx. But the Italians are most angry with France, which is where most of the Tunisians say they want to go.

As Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told the daily La Repubblica: “The problem of immigration is becoming a bit like the nuclear issue. Everyone wants to say something about it, but no one wants it in their backyard.”

Mohamed Haddaji is a good example. In January, he paid about $2,100 to travel to Lampedusa, an Italian island near Tunisia, on a small boat. Single and 25, he worked in a Tunis bakery, but with the collapse of state authority he took his chance to go to France, where he has family, he said, to have a better life.

The Italian authorities are pleasant, he said; the French are not. “We sleep in the streets in France,” he said. He came with $1,400; he is decently dressed and has various phone cards in his wallet for Tunisia, Italy and France. Like his friend Jalel, 23, he says he wants to earn money and return to Tunisia.

But he has no papers, except for a card with his name and photograph from an Italian charity, and the French police told him to go back to Italy to get some. Even if he gets a six-month residency card and can show the French a valid train ticket from Italy, he may still get sent back, said Francis Lamy, the prefect of France’s Alpes-Maritimes department.

The French police have the right and duty, Mr. Lamy said in an interview in Nice, to ask a foreigner “to justify the reason for his visit and the duration, and to demonstrate the means to pay for this stay,” he said — usually $88 a day. “If the person acts suspicious or the answers are not satisfactory, the state can, under Schengen, send the person back, in this case to Italy, and Italy has an obligation to retake him.”

Mr. Lamy has told police officers under his command — as well as the 240 in three mobile units sent from Paris to help him deal with the Tunisians — “to follow the rules strictly.” Those rules, he said, along with a new French security law passed last month, allow officers within 12 miles of the border to stop people for identity and security checks if they are suspected of violating the law, crossing illegally or smuggling.

The police have arrested 100 human traffickers, Mr. Lamy said. In March alone, he said, French authorities arrested 2,800 foreigners, nearly all Tunisian, of whom 1,700 were expelled from France. Of those, 1,450 were returned to Italy, and some 250 were returned directly to Tunisia. There was not a single woman or application for political asylum, he said, insisting that each case is treated separately and with judicial oversight.

Just this week, said a worker for the state-financed legal aid group, Forum Réfugiés, Tunisians who first came to her for help a month ago had been told to return to Italy to get papers. When they re-enter France, even with the papers, they are sent back to Italy for not having enough money. “Normally to have an identity check, the police need suspicion of an infraction,” said the worker, Maud, who works in a state detention center in Nice and asked that her last name not be used. “Today there is racial profiling.”


There is significant political pressure on both sets of police from their governments, which loudly denounce illegal immigration and seem less than rigorous in applying European Union regulations that forbid racial profiling, though they deny it.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, unpopular in opinion polls, has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance, personified by his new interior minister, Claude Guéant, who says France also wants to cut legal immigration.

Italy’s coalition government gets support from the Northern League, which runs on an anti-immigration platform, while Mr. Sarkozy “has a similar problem” with the far-right National Front. “And in a moment when presidential elections are looming, he cannot afford to be seen as weak in immigration,” said Marta Dassu, director of Aspen Institute Italia, a research group.

A good example of the tensions and hyperbole over the issue erupted on Sunday, when the French prefect, Mr. Lamy, asked the state railway company to halt trains from Ventimiglia to France because of a planned demonstration supporting the Tunisians. He acted on his own, he said, because he had evidence from his Italian counterpart that the protesters, who had no permit to demonstrate and included a group of “possibly 50 violent activists,” presented “a serious risk to public order.”

Italy reacted angrily, sending its ambassador in Paris to protest what it said was a border closing in violation of European Union laws and principles. In the end, the disruption of train traffic lasted only several hours, and the European Union said France had acted correctly.

But the issue remains hot. Christian Estrosi, the deputy mayor of Nice and a legislator from Mr. Sarkozy’s party, said, “It is a little too easy for Italy to be generous with the territory of others.”

At the dry fountain in Ventimiglia, a young man named Ali was spinning tales about Tunisia, claiming to be the brother of the vegetable seller who immolated himself and set off the Tunisian revolution, and then asking for money. “The Europeans are racist,” he said angrily. “They don’t like the Arabs.”

Travelers using technology find that trains beat planes

FROM: Chicago Tribune

DATE: 19/04/2011

AUTHOR: Josh Noel

A few weeks ago I wrote about choosing to travel by train instead of plane for various reasons, one of them being that I could spread out and work uninterrupted for several hours as the landscape rolled by.

Turns out I'm not alone.

A recently released study concludes that travelers most often use technology on high-speed trains. That's followed by "curbside" buses (express services), Amtrak (normal-speed trains), Greyhound and, in last place, airplanes.

Planes have several drawbacks, said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation professor and director of DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, which conducted the study.

Among them are the hassle of getting through security, being required to power off at takeoff and landing, and lack of space.

"A lot of business travelers want business-class seats (on airplanes) not even for the luxury, but to get work done," Schwieterman said. "The coach cabin is seen as a wasteland for electronics."

During two years of gathering information, researchers never observed a flight with more than half of the cabin using electronics. On buses and trains, "it happens all the time," Schwieterman said.

The project began as a study of how people use private technology on curbside buses traveling between cities. It soon expanded to other modes of transport.

Students, Schwieterman and Lauren Fischer, the Chaddick Institute research director, walked the aisles on 235 trips across the U.S. and in Western Europe to observe the technology people used.

Results were broken into "visual" (such as laptop computers) and "non-visual" (such as mp3 players). Rail was by far most popular for visual technology — the kind business travelers use. Why? Visual technology usually requires a tray table, elbow room and a power supply.

"Rail is the only one that gives you all three," Schwieterman said.

Some of the findings in the study aren't so surprising, like the fact that use of portable electronic devices rose significantly in 2010 from 2009 and that travelers "are rapidly shifting toward more sophisticated devices."

What was surprising — but made sense — was how unattractive airplanes are for interacting with technology.

The results make the case for greater federal investment in high-speed rail, which has been a priority of the Obama administration.

Railway relics unearthed at condo project tell history of city’s boom

FROM: The Globe and Mail

DATE: 19/04/2011

AUTHOR: Richard Blackwell

Relics of Toronto’s 19th-century railway boom, when train links began to turn the city into an industrial powerhouse, have been unearthed near Fort York.

However, given that they are at the base of the new Library District condominium project, their fate has yet to be decided.

Brick and masonry foundation walls uncovered by archaeologists are the remains of a huge cruciform-shaped engine-house complex built by the Grand Trunk Railway in the 1850s. These buildings, near the shore of Lake Ontario, marked the starting point of the railway’s westbound ribbon of track.

The site, adjacent to the Bathurst Street bridge south of Front Street, is part of the Library District construction project by Context Development and the Toronto Community Housing Corp. The area the archeologists are scrutinizing is roughly where the library building would be in the development, which will also include a condominium tower, social housing and a park.

According to railway historian Derek Boles, Toronto was basically a warehousing centre until the mid-19th century. The railways turned it into a manufacturing hub and “having an appreciation for that background is really important for understanding Toronto’s history,” he said.

What will happen to the unearthed building remnants is unclear, given the construction plans, but Mr. Boles said they should be saved.

Preliminary archaeological work on the site about four years ago revealed evidence of ruins, and historic maps indicated the developers could expect to find some parts of the engine house structure. The dig was organized to determine what would need to be dealt with before construction began.

Susan Hughes, supervisor of archaeology at the City of Toronto, said she was told last Thursday that some intact portions of the engine house had been found, including 2.5-metre-high foundation walls consisting of 15 layers of stone, and some timbers that supported the floors.

Ms. Hughes said everyone involved in the site is committed to some kind of “interpretation and commemoration” of what has been found, but exactly how that will be done is not yet clear. It could mean reconstructing some of the walls in the adjacent park, or possibly even keeping the archaeological finds in place under a glass floor in the library. The final decision will likely be made after a consultant’s report is received, and after negotiations are conducted between the city, the province and the developers.

“This is an important part of … telling the story of the 19th-century evolution of those lands,” Ms. Hughes said. However, “it is hard to know at this point whether it can be incorporated [in the project] in a reasonable way,” she added.

Ron Williamson, whose firm, Archaeological Services Inc., is conducting the dig, said what has been uncovered so far appears to be the northeast corner of the building’s foundation. But “we’re very early here,” he said, and it will take several more days to figure out the size and overall significance of the find.

David O’Hara, administrator of the Fort York museum, said the engine house appears on old plans and charts from the 1850s, just off the southeast corner of the fort.

He said the site was earlier occupied by a blockhouse, built in the late 1790s, that was part of the Fort York complex. But any remnants of that building were likely destroyed when the railway property was developed decades later.

The Grand Trunk Railway built the large engine house, which included a turntable, smithy, pump house and temporary passenger terminal, as part of its efforts to compete in the market for travel to the Midwest United States. The Grand Trunk had a separate line that ran to Eastern Canada, Mr. Boles said, but its terminus was three kilometres further east near the Don Valley. For several months in the mid-1850s, until the two lines were linked by rail, connecting passengers had to take a horse-drawn omnibus between the terminals.

The Grand Trunk eventually became part of Canadian National Railway.

Time could be up for Swiss Railways watches

FROM: The Sidney Moring Herald

DATE: 19/04/2011

AUTHOR: Tom Mulier

BASEL: Mondaine, the maker of Official Swiss Railways watches, may have to shut a two-year-old factory because its timepieces are not Swiss enough.

The future of the Sfr10 million ($10.6 million) plant in Solothurn and its 110 workers would be jeopardised should larger rivals such as Swatch Group succeed in calls for fewer non-Swiss components to be allowed in Swiss-made timepieces, a co-owner of Mondaine, Ronnie Bernheim, said. Mondaine, which has been making watches modelled on the nation's railway-station clocks for 25 years, uses imported dials and cases.

''This law would be cutting the industry into two,'' Mr Bernheim said in Basel. ''The volume business will be killed, except for the big companies. Our foreign competitors are laughing.''

Watches were Switzerland's fastest-growing export last year. The industry has rebuilt itself since teetering on the brink of collapse in the 1970s. To keep its lead as other manufacturers shift to countries such as China in search of cheaper labour, the industry is trying to erect higher barriers to entry, which would make Swiss watches a scarcer luxury.

Since 1971, watchmakers have been allowed to use non-Swiss components for less than 50 per cent of the value of the watch's movement, or motor. The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, which includes Swatch Group and its competitor Cie Financiere Richemont, asked the government in 2007 to add higher requirements on the use of Swiss components in the value of the entire timepiece. The government proposed that for industrial products, 60 per cent should come from Switzerland. A final decision may be made next year, said Jean-Daniel Pasche, head of the federation.

Luxury watchmaking is one of the few manufacturing industries that has resisted a full shift of production to Asia. Still, the industry's growth has attracted non-Swiss companies. Tianjin Seagull Watch, a Chinese company, has begun producing complicated watch mechanisms such as tourbillons, which on a Swiss watch can command prices of $US50,000 ($47,400).

Kenya revives its colonial rail system to meet its modern needs

FROM: The Christian Science Monitor

DATE: 13/04/2011

AUTHOR: Mike Pflanz

ON THE 06:40am TO NAIROBI – We pull slowly out of Athi River station, leaving behind the run-down railroad shed that is now home to the Jesus Victory Center and a tinshack kindergarten.

Ahead, an hour-long commute, through the Athi plains once swarming with wildlife, beneath final approach to the international airport, through the smoggy iron roof slums and the industrial area, and into the heart of Nairobi.

“Ah, we love this thing,” smiles Steve Nyahe, 40, a graphic designer, who like most aboard the train used to have to sit cramped in a 14-seat "matatu" minibus taxi to town, stalled in jams and pollution, for two hours or more.

“She keeps time, she takes me to work in less than one hour, she’s cut my travel costs by 50 percent. Who can complain?”

The 6:40 a.m. from Athi River, 17 stops into Nairobi, is one of a raft of new peak time services to and from the city, more than doubling the total from 8 to 18 since March 1.

Passenger numbers have jumped 45 percent since then, to 716,922 last month, according to the privatized firm now running Kenya’s railroads.

More than 2,300 of them use the Athi River service each day – the equivalent of more than 164 squeezed minibus taxis.

Onboard the 6:40 a.m., Patricia Wachira, a customer services executive for an agrochemicals company, sat reading her Bible, the early morning sun streaming through the windows.

“When I heard that they were bringing a train, I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “A neighbor told me it was true, when I first used this route, just a month ago, it was my first time to be on a train.

“It is so different from the matatu, it’s comfortable, there’s no hassle, no loud noise, no jams, no pollution. There was no way I could read my Bible on the matatu. I arrive at work fresh, and it’s quicker. I have an extra hour in my day.”

Beside her, Stella Vanessa, 21, and Tracy Nderitu, 22, colleagues at a real estate agency, shared a vanity mirror to apply their make up.

“It’s great, that’s all I need to say,” said Nderitu. “We needed this thing very much, it’s there in every other country, it was about time we had it here in Kenya. The only question is, why did they wait for so long?”

In fact, revolutionary as taking the train seems to these commuters, the rails they’re riding on are older even than the country of Kenya itself. They are the reason Nairobi exists.

Way back in the late 19th century, ox-drawn wagons were used to ferry raw materials from the interior for export via to ships waiting at Kenya’s coast.

Adventurous British businesses flourishing in neighboring Uganda successfully petitioned the parliament in London to build a rail line to speed up the 900-mile journey.

The equivalent of $394 million was allocated for the audacious project, which would include carving railroads up and down the sometimes 45° escarpments of the Rift Valley that slices through in Kenya’s center.

Work started in 1896, and almost instantly hit disaster. At least 30 indentured Indian and African laborers had lost their lives to the infamous "Man-Eaters of Tsavo," a pair of male lions which attacked work camps. Hundreds died as engineers struggled to bridge ravines and negotiate the sharp gradients. Malaria cut down hundreds more.

What started as an expression of Britain’s imperial might ended in near fiasco. Having failed even to reach the Ugandan border, construction stopped in western Kenya as costs spiraled past $729 million.

Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, later put a typically brave face on his description of the railroad construction as ‘one of the finest expositions [of] the British art of ‘muddling through’.”

Opposition politicians at the time vehemently disagreed, labeling the project the "Lunatic Line."

But what was left behind, at least, was a link between the Indian Ocean and Kenya’s interior. And, near the railroad’s midpoint, Nairobi.

Kenya’s capital exists only because engineers were forced to pause here, in an empty swampland named Nyrobe by Masai herdsmen, as they prepared their assault across the Rift Valley.

What started as a railhead, with workers camping under canvas, gave birth to today’s still-growing city of four million people. From the city, Kenya itself grew, a country with borders, a currency, an administration.

Also born at the same time was a new concept. That an elite – initially the whites, later Kenya’s own post-independence big men – was entitled to take from the powerless poor whatever was their whim.

To earn back some of their outlay, the British needed businesses here in their new colony, producing materials and goods to be carried down to the coast for export.

To do this, the government in London offered an acre of prime farmland, land used for millennia by Kenya’s indigenous people, for a penny. Soon hundreds, then thousands, of British settlers arrived.

“If you really think about it, this railway is the source of all our problems,” said Charles Owino, 51, reading his Daily Nation at Nairobi station.

“That land was the Africans’. They were forced out, they moved to into other tribes’ lands and took over. That is the root cause of all election violence we see today, the fight over land. Even look where the clashes happen, they are in towns all along the railway line.”

Back on the 6:40 a.m. from Athi River, we’re starting to see evidence of the fallout from that entrenched, institutionalized, body politic of corruption.

We’re passing through the slums that ring the city center. Tin shacks crowd muddy lanes. Smoke from charcoal cooking fires hazes the morning air. Ungainly marabou storks circle above chaotic dumpsites.

Millions today live here in these unplanned settlements, ignored by successive governments more concerned with lining their pockets than socially serving the worst-off in this stratified society.

The fate of the railroads, once Kenya’s largest employer, once running scores of trains along 1,726 miles of track, mirrors the country’s near-collapse under the rule of Daniel Arap Moi, the former president.

Today, fewer than 600 miles are operational, and decades of poor maintenance mean that maximum speeds are down to around 30 m.p.h. Derailments, sometimes fatal, are common. Some 90 percent of Kenya’s freight, which should be the backbone of any rail system, is moved by road.

“You know the problem here was management,” said one senior official with 20 years experience at Kenya Railways. “Of course if you are asked to steal money for somebody, you also steal some for yourself. This went all throughout the company. It has brought us to where we are today.”

Where we are today is what keeps Fred Owino, Daniel Ongombe and Daniel Kamau busy.

Between them, the trio in charge of the locomotive workshop at Nairobi Train Station have 47 years of experience maintaining the giant General Electric 12-cylinder train engines, bolted together in the early 1970s in Erie, Pennsylvania.

When Daily Dispatches visited, Engine No. 9312 had just spent the night pulling a dozen carriages up from the coast. Within an hour, it was due out again, to the far side of Kenya at Malaba on the border with Uganda.

Kamau, working swiftly, greased the cylinder head. Ongombe, up in the cab, was checking engine pressure, his eyes scanning the spider’s web of wires regulating the engine’s scarce electronics.

“I can say that the best part of the job is finding a locomotive with very complicated problems, and fixing it ahead of time,” says Owino, the shift foreman.

His 17-year-old son, raised around the railways, is studying hard to follow his father’s footsteps into this workshop. “That will make me very, very proud,” he beams. His smile then slips a little. “I can only hope that there is more advancement and he gets to work on a modern railways system. It’s coming, I’m sure.”

It’s Brown M. Ondego’s job to make that happen. He is executive chairman of Rift Valley Railways (RVR), the private firm which won the concession to upgrade the Kenyan and Ugandan rail network. He took over from the first management team, who struggled to bring any improvements.

“It was collapsing, it had literally failed,” said Ondego, of his predecessors’ approach.

“The management was not up to speed, and they failed to bring in capital to invest, and it means it was, and still is, a fairly dilapidated network.”

Freight is his key focus, but an easy PR win for RVR was the commuter services. “We were not contractually obliged to take that up, but we did it basically because of the demand from the public,” says Ondego. “I think with that and other moves on our part, you’re starting to see a tremendous improvement.”

As the 6:40 a.m. pulled in to Nairobi Station’s Platform 2 a little over an hour after leaving Athi River, the swirl of commuters decanting out and filing towards the station exit would suggest Ondego and his team are doing something right.

Sharp-suited businesswomen, kids in school uniforms, young guys in low-slung jeans on smartphones and men in jackets and ties all swarmed off the train, leaving it empty save for the cleaners with their brushes and buckets.

Alongside RVR’s promises of more commuter routes, more stations, refurbished engines and carriages, the government has drawn up plans for a light-rail system from Nairobi’s suburbs to and around its center.

Easing access into this massively congested city, clearing some of its traffic bottlenecks, bringing goods here cheaper, all will springboard Nairobi’s growth.

But glance back the other way, into the rail sidings, where long convoys of container cars stand idly, slowly rusting in the sun. Listen as the clang of hammer against iron drifts in from the workshop in the distance, where Fred Owino and his gang work on.

Easy fixes like the commuter lines are all very well and very welcomed. But Kenya’s railways have a long climb ahead of them to reach the long-promised glorious new era.

A working life: The railway controller

FROM: The Guardian

DATE: 19/03/2011

AUTHOR: Leo Benedictus

It is possible, I suppose, to have thoroughness trained into you, but Deborah Hawken strikes me as a person who was born with hers. "Obviously this is a quiet area, so you will have to switch your mobile phone to silent," she explains, as we swish upstairs into First Great Western's Swindon control centre. "And there's no fire alarm expected today," she adds, "so if it does go off, it might be a fire. In which case, the exits are here and here." I nod, and make the necessary mental preparations.

Hawken begins the tour. Pointing, around an archipelago of tidy desks, she shows me the maintenance controller who talks to drivers on the phone to solve technical problems; there's the service controller, who investigates the cause of delays; there's the crew delivery managers; there's the high-speed desk; there's the people who arrange road replacement services; there's the customer information team, which posts all the service information online and on the station display boards.

The office is staffed constantly, in shifts, so none of the computers are personalised with clutter. The mood is relaxed and cheerful.

As a senior controller, the post she has held for almost a year, Hawken is supposed to supervise everything around us. If you ever find yourself on a delayed First Great Western train – which could happen anywhere from London to Penzance to Hereford to Brighton – then it is to this building, and to Hawken's desk, that you should direct your prayers and imprecations. I suggest this is a terrifying responsibility. "Yeah," Hawken laughs, sounding not in the least terrified at all.

Yet the spread of problems that she could face each day would frighten many people off. "We'll deal with anything," she explains, "from safety-related things, to when a train breaks down, to when you've got major signalling faults, to simple things like when someone's left a wallet on a train. It's all sorts. Some days it will run reasonably smoothly, other days it's just one thing after another and you're really up against it."

All seems calm this morning, however. Nearby, some of Hawken's colleagues are making wry suggestions about how to fix a hole in the platform at Dorking. Besides this, everything appears to be running well. To keep this peace, Hawken relies on her phone and computer. Across several screens at her desk she can watch the progress of all the trains along their routes and keep an eye on the condition of the signals. The picture resembles a fearsomely detailed circuit diagram, studded with components. Each train has an identifying number – 1A16 and 1B94 are two that catch my eye – with different colours to indicate their progress. A few are red or yellow, but most are green. Which means on time, I presume? "Yes," Hawken says. "Yellow is getting later and the red is late." The final word is aspirated rather shamefully.

In this industry, however, lateness is inevitable. When Hawken began working on the railways, aged 20, as a welcome host at Newton Abbot station, she found delays as frustrating as any passenger. Later, as she gained more responsibility, becoming station manager for four years, she still sometimes could not understand why the controllers seemed almost determined to inconvenience her customers.

When she became a controller herself however, in 2001, she started to see how bewilderingly complex the picture really was – to anyone who could see all of it.

Delays can come from many sources, for one thing. There are the breakdowns and the "wrong kind of snow" and the other things that people grumble over, but there are also lightning strikes, suicides, sheep on the line, floods and – frequently these days – cable thefts to worry about. People steal the signal wires for the copper, Hawken explains. Or, often, they mistakenly steal fibre optic ones. A recent theft in south Wales affected, to the best of her recollection, about 30,000 people. "You need a big sign that says, 'This is NOT copper'," she smiles.

And once a delay has been caused, the ramifications can be complex, creating dilemmas that you would need a moral philosopher to solve. For instance, when Hawken was a station manager she often asked control for permission to hold a mainline train on the platform so passengers from a delayed branch-line train could still connect to it. As often as not she would be refused, and struggled to understand why. Now she realises this had probably been a sensible decision.

First, there is the obvious point that the mainline train, and those behind it, may also have passengers who will miss their connection if they are delayed. And this is far from the end of the matter. "By holding a train, you could cause all sorts of problems," Hawken explains. "Some services don't have very long at their destinations before they go back out again. You've also got train crew due to have a break, before not necessarily working back on the same service."

And if you end up with crew in the wrong place, the problems amplify. For instance, each driver can only "sign" certain routes, meaning that these are the only stretches of track they are experienced enough to drive trains on. So if the necessary drivers are not where they are needed, you cannot always guarantee that a colleague will be able to take their place. In short, sometimes the convenience of a small group of passengers must be sacrificed so that a larger group can arrive on time. "I don't think it's a decision that anyone takes lightly," Hawken says, "but we do need to look at the problems that [it] could cause."

Now aged 34, Hawken still takes the train to work and back, so she understands how what she does affects people. "I do hear passengers having a bit of a grumble," she admits. "Yes, I can understand why they get upset when they're delayed, but I don't ever take it personally because I know – myself and all my colleagues – we do work as hard as we can to provide a good service. But sometimes it's difficult, and of course the travelling public aren't ever going to realise that … I think you've just got to accept it really, otherwise you really would be a in a bad mood a lot of the time."

Ironically, even though Hawken and her colleagues do everything they can to reduce delays, she admits it is the days when things go wrong that she enjoys most. These are the days, after all, when she is needed most – and when the greatest challenges come up. "I just love the fact that I never know what I'm going to be dealing with next," she says. "That's what I enjoy about the job … It's when you've got a really difficult problem and you manage to get around it. Whether it's myself or one of my colleagues saying, 'Have you thought of this?'. Then we try it and it works."

Even so, challenges like these cannot be relied upon to form an orderly queue. "You can't plan for one incident to happen after you've dealt with the previous one," Hawken says. "So you can be sitting there, and you can be told that you've lost all the signalling at Didcot, and then you'll be told that you've got a train failure at Reading. Then you'll be told that a train has struck a load of sheep down on the Barnstaple line and it can't move. They'll all come within a few minutes of each other."

At such times, the control floor becomes unrecognisable from the peaceful place it is today. "It gets very noisy because everyone's on the phones," she says. "You get a few people coming in to try and help, or to try and find out exactly what's going on. So the control floor tends to be busier. It's about trying to prioritise what you deal with, who you speak to first, and try to drown out the noise so you can concentrate on what you're doing."

And what is that like? "I quite enjoy the adrenaline rush," she admits. "And when I look back I get satisfaction out of thinking that I got all those passengers on the move. We sorted that out. It went as well as it could do."

One thing that no one on the railways takes pleasure from, however, are the regular incidents of suicide that blight the track. "Only last week, I had a driver phone up to report he'd just struck someone," Hawken says, retreating momentarily from her usual cheery tone.

"It's difficult, because I've never experienced it myself, but you realise it must be an absolutely horrendous thing. This bloke had just come across someone who was lying on the track with his head on the rail." She pauses sadly for a moment.

At other times, meanwhile, the problems she faces can be positively entertaining. "A passenger on one of our trains phoned up to report some 'animal cruelty' involving a man and a goat in a field," she says, pronouncing the words in such a way as to leave me in no doubt about exactly what the man was doing. "And there have been a few times," she adds, her colleague chuckling along this time, "when we've had reports of men touching themselves on trains. It's not that unusual." I see, I say, and nod. What's the procedure there? Hawken's response is raucous laughter.

Curriculum vitae

Pay £43,000 a year, including overtime.

Hours Eight hours a day, in a rotating shift pattern.

Work-life balance "It's a little bit difficult, but it's workable. I think it works as well as it ever will. I'm not going to say I find it easy, but I find my job rewarding so it is worthwhile. Doing shifts helps, because it means I'll be with my son in the morning or the afternoon."

Best thing "The variety, and being with so many excellent people."

Worst thing "You can't actually see the effects of what you do on the ground. You're just seeing it on the map. It might be nice to be more connected to the problems we solve."

Overtime
Last night Deborah ate 'spaghetti bolognese when I was here. Will that do?' Deborah always hears '"What's that?" Because my job title doesn't actually indicate what we are or what we do. I find it difficult explaining to people who don't work on the railway what I actually do.' Deborah enjoys reading chick-lit 'I have to say, I'm a bit sad, but the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella is my favourite. It is a bit rubbish, really, isn't it?' If Deborah wasn't a railway controller … 'At school, I wanted to be a fabric designer. I was very much into art.'

On BART Trains, the Seats Are Taken (by Bacteria)

FROM: The New York Times

DATE: 05/03/2011

AUTHOR: Zusha Elinson

Carrie Nee prefers to stand during her half-hour commute on BART from San Leandro to downtown San Francisco. Although the trains’ blue fabric seats are plush and comfortable, Ms. Nee refuses to sit on them.

“I would love to sit down, but it just grosses me out. They’re disgusting,” said Ms. Nee, a 26-year-old records clerk.

Riders on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system have long complained about germs in the hard-to-clean cloth seats. As Bob Franklin, the BART board president, acknowledged, “People don’t know what’s in there.”

Now they do.

The Bay Citizen commissioned Darleen Franklin, a supervisor at San Francisco State University’s biology lab, to analyze the bacterial content of a random BART seat. The results may make you want to stand during your trip.

Fecal and skin-borne bacteria resistant to antibiotics were found in a seat on a train headed from Daly City to Dublin/Pleasanton. Further testing on the skin-borne bacteria showed characteristics of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the drug-resistant bacterium that causes potentially lethal infections, although Ms. Franklin cautioned that the MRSA findings were preliminary.

High concentrations of at least nine bacteria strains and several types of mold were found on the seat. Even after Ms. Franklin cleaned the cushion with an alcohol wipe, potentially harmful bacteria were found growing in the fabric.

Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, played down the threat of infection from harmful bacteria on a BART seat. “I suspect it’s not a very big problem,” Dr. Swartzberg said. “That said, if there’s another way to do it, where you can clean it better, then you should do it.”

He said the cloth seats most likely allowed bacteria to flourish because they were more difficult to clean and disinfect.

James Allison, a BART spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the findings were “not surprising,” considering that 330,000 commuters rode the trains daily. Last year, the BART police received 1,051 complaints of smoking, eating and drinking; 245 complaints of urinating or defecating; and 56 reports of spitting.

Mr. Allison encouraged riders to wash their hands and use hand sanitizers available at BART stations.

Hygiene has emerged as a key issue as BART officials determine what kind of seats to install for a new fleet of cars in 2017. In January, system employees were invited to test a variety of seat models at a Hayward warehouse. One employee, Melissa Jordan, filed a report on BART’s Web site about the trade-offs in selecting the new seats.

“Can I live with some type of seat that’s less cushiony — maybe padded vinyl instead of fabric — if it’s easier to keep clean?” Ms. Jordan wrote.

Ms. Franklin’s analysis also revealed that Muni, which uses acrylic plastic seats, appears to be more sanitary.

She tested a seat on the No. 28 bus, a route frequented by college students traveling from San Francisco State to Daly City. Two benign bacteria colonies were found. Unlike the BART seat analysis, Ms. Franklin’s test of the Muni seat after cleaning it with an alcohol wipe detected no bacteria.

Ms. Franklin tested the BART seat at the back of a Dublin/Pleasanton-bound train in the midafternoon. A swab taken from the seat cushion and headrest produced a veritable forest of mold and colorful bacteria.

In two separate tests, Ms. Franklin identified characteristics of the MRSA bacteria growing in the seat. The first test confirmed the presence of staphylococcus aureus, the skin-borne bacteria. A second confirmed that the bacteria, like MRSA, was resistant to the antibiotics methicillin and penicillin. But a third test intended to isolate the MRSA bacteria was negative.

MRSA is known as the “superbug” because it is resistant to antibiotics. It infects people through open wounds, attacking the immune system; 19,000 deaths each year are related to MRSA infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There’s a probability that it is MRSA, but more tests would need to be done,” Ms. Franklin said. “Somebody probably was wearing shorts and had an infection, and there you go. It is concerning.”

Ms. Franklin identified two other bacteria strains that she said resulted from fecal contamination of the BART seat. Those strains were also resistant to antibiotics. The other bacteria did not appear to be harmful and are found throughout the environment, Ms. Franklin said.

The soft seat is a BART trademark, going back to Sept. 11, 1972, the day the first train rolled down the track. The seat covers are made of 90 percent wool and 10 percent nylon and are filled with foam padding, which was made fire-resistant after a fire in the Transbay Tube in 1979.

A BART brochure proclaimed that the new trains were designed to “lure the commuter out of the comfort of his automobile.” The trains were “almost as wide as a Boeing 707, and every bit as comfortable,” according to the brochure, which was printed in the shape of a BART car.

“BART was an all-new system, and they wanted everything to be different,” said Mike Healey, who was a BART spokesman at the time. “They wanted cushioned seats and rugs on the floors. Comfort was certainly a key selling point for the system.”

The marketing campaign worked. Ridership has grown. And the once-quiet suburban commuter train is now a heavily trafficked line.

“Things have changed,” said Mr. Franklin, the BART board president. “Now you’re no longer guaranteed a parking space. You’re no longer guaranteed a seat. There are 350,000 people traveling every day, as opposed to 50,000.”

BART cleaners go through trains every night and tackle the dirtiest seat cushions. Hard surfaces are wiped down with an industrial disinfectant.

Between 300 and 500 seat covers are removed each week and sent to a third-party vendor to be dry-cleaned and disinfected, Mr. Allison said. But that is a fraction of the 40,000 seats on BART’s 669 cars.

Dry-cleaning costs BART $595,000 a year. When necessary, BART replaces the cloth seats for an entire car — generally about 60 seats — at a cost of about $12,500. The system intends to continue rotating in new cloth seats as it continues to try out seats for the new cars.

Mr. Allison said that a major concern in designing the new cars was cleaner, more comfortable seating. BART plans to let the public test different types of seats in demonstration cars and then comment on their suitability.

Mr. Allison said that the choices for new seat models included hard plastic and padded vinyl.

Ms. Nee, the BART rider, said she would prefer hard plastic, especially after hearing the results of the bacteria analysis.

“I would seriously sacrifice my comfort for a more sanitary surrounding,” she said. “Granted, you’re going to be comfortable with the seats they have now, but I think your health is much more important than having your butt hurt for half an hour.”

Michelangelo's David 'could collapse due to high-speed train building'

FROM: The Telegraph

DATE: 04/03/2011

AUTHOR: Nick Squires

The statue is riddled with tiny cracks, particularly in the ankles of the boy warrior, and could collapse as a result of vibrations from the 1.4 billion euro project, which is due to start in the summer.

The threat of serious damage being done to one of the world’s most famous statues has prompted calls for it to be moved to a purpose-built museum away from the construction work.

“The tunnel will pass about 600 meters (2,000ft) from the statue of David, the ankles of which, it is well known, are riddled with micro-fissures. If it’s not moved before digging begins, there is a serious risk that it will collapse,” said Fernando De Simone, an expert in underground engineering.

The cracks in the marble are mostly in David’s left ankle and in the carved tree stump which bears part of the statue’s weight.

They are thought to have developed because for more than a century the statue leant at an angle, and because the marble used in the statue was not of a high standard.

Florence is divided over plans to construct a four-mile-long train tunnel and a six-level underground train station as part of a project to improve the Tuscan city’s rail links with Rome and Milan.

Mr De Simone said the 17ft high statue was already under intense strain because of vibrations caused by the 1.5 million tourists who troop through Florence’s Accademia Gallery each year to see the work, and due to traffic in the streets surrounding the building.

“The risk of collapse... will be very high if the resonance caused by excavation machinery for the high-speed train tunnel, as well as the vibrations of passing trains, are added to existing vibrations caused by visitors,” said Mr De Simone.

He has called on Florentine authorities to move the statue from its current location to a specially-built new museum, which should be designed to withstand tremors from earthquakes.

Vittorio Sgarbi, a prominent Italian art critic, called for the train tunnel project to be shelved entirely. “Our heritage should come before everything else. The excavation work should not go ahead,” he said.

Cristina Acidini, an official in charge of Florence’s museums, said the Accademia Gallery was being tested by engineers for its ability to withstand earthquakes and that an assessment of the tunnel’s potential effect on David would be conducted at the same time.

Florence is in a region of Italy which is prone to earthquakes and has a recorded history of more than 120 tremors, although none reached more than five on the Richter scale.

Michelangelo spent three years creating the statue of David, the biblical hero who killed Goliath with a single stone from his slingshot. It was unveiled in the city’s Piazza della Signoria in 1504.

After concern that it was being damaged by grime and rain, it was moved in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery, with a replica placed in the square, outside the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s centuries-old seat of government.

The marble figure was commissioned by Florence’s rulers to symbolise the city state’s ability, despite its small size, to fight off bigger neighbouring powers.

A taste of Wonderland on the steam railway

FROM: Whitby Gazette

DATE: 21/02/2011

AUTHOR: n/a

GROSMONT became Wonderland this Monday (21 February) as the Mad Hatter’s tea party climbed aboard the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

The event was organised to celebrate a new partnership between NYMR and Matter Hatter Tea, who will be the sole suppliers of tea served on the railway this summer.

The Mad Hatter Tea Company, who also supply Grand Central Railways, chose the NYMR due to the strong links Whitby has with Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll.

Carroll was a regular visitor to Whitby and it is believed he derived the inspiration for his poem The Walrus and Carpenter while strolling along Whitby beach.

The NYMR is the world’s most popular heritage steam railway and it is estimated that 100,000 cups of tea are consumed on the line each year.

Train driver attacked by seagull, commuters delayed

FROM: Metro

DATE: 18/02/2011

AUTHOR: n/a

Commuters are used to their trains being late - however, the delays are not normally caused by a vicious seagull attacking the driver.

The driver of the 8.15am train from Hastings to London yesterday morning was walking along the platform when a seagull flew down and struck his head, reports The Daily Mail.

He was checked over by first-aiders following the attack and resumed his duties around 15 minutes later, but not before an announcement had been made explaining the reason for the train's delay.

One waiting passenger, foster carer Liza Donaghue, told the newspaper: 'No one had really taken any notice until that point, then everyone looked and started looking at each other and saying, "Did he just say what I thought he said?"

'Then everyone started laughing. People could not believe it.'

A spokesman for Southeastern Trains said that while seagull attacks are rare, they can be very dangerous.

In Birmingham, locals are also having issues with brazen seagulls, with the birds swooping down on people's heads and stealing food from their hands.

According to the Birmingham Mail, councillors plan to fill the winged menaces' nests with fake eggs in a bid to persuade them to keep out of harm's way.

One loose nut derailed KTX train

FROM: Korea JoongAng Daily

DATE: 15/02/2011

AUTHOR: Kim Hee-jin

Human error was responsible for the derailing of a KTX train last Friday - lots of human error.

And the Blue House announced yesterday that three of the 10 cars on the derailed train were private cars for President Lee Myung-bak, though the president wasn’t on board at the time.

According to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs yesterday, the train was derailed by a small nut and bolt in a switching box that hadn’t been tightened by a repairman.

The loose nut set off alarms in the train surveillance center, which controls KTX trains, three times, and several trains were allowed through the Iljin tunnel on different tracks.

But after a communication lapse, the Seoul-bound “Sancheon” hit the faulty tracks and derailed at 1:05 p.m. Friday about 500 meters (0.3 miles) away from Gwangmyeong Station in Gyeonggi. Six of the train’s 10 cars jumped the tracks.

It was the first derailment for the 7-year-old KTX system.

“The reason for the derailing of the KTX train was that a control box attached to the track [in the tunnel] had been poorly repaired,” the ministry said.

According to the ministry, a repairman from Korea Railroad Corp. worked in the tunnel at about 1:30 a.m. Friday changing cables in a switching box attached to the track in the tunnel. The repairman also changed several nuts and didn’t tighten one nut that was 7 millimeters (0.28 inches) in diameter.

The switching box helps trains switch from one set of tracks on the left side of the tunnel to a set on the right-hand side. If it malfunctions, it can’t align the switching tracks properly.

Because of the loose nut, the switching box sent a series of three error signals to the train surveillance center. Korail sent a group of repairmen to the box at 7:30 a.m, but they failed to find the loose nut. They decided to fix the box later and manually manipulated the box to let all KTX trains go through the tunnel on the tracks on the left, not the ones on the right side.

“As most KTX trains entering Gwangmyeong Station go straight forward, the repairmen made that decision, we guess,” the ministry said.

But the repairmen didn’t tell the train surveillance center what they had done. Without knowing of the problem, the center ordered the Sancheon to switch to the track on the right, but the switching box malfunctioned, leading to the derailment.

The ministry said the train was initially supposed to use the safe, left-hand tracks. But it was 3 minutes behind schedule, and the surveillance center decided to use the right-hand tracks to shave a few seconds off its travel time.

“If the repairmen and the center had fully communicated with each other before the train entered the tunnel, the accident would have been prevented,” the ministry said.

But the ministry said that it was continuing to investigate the accident.

“Whether the loosely tightened nut was caused by a mistake by the repairman or not should be discovered through an in-depth investigation,” the ministry said. “The nut could have become loose by a malfunction of the switching box.”

According to the Blue House, the derailed train contained three presidential cars, although President Lee wasn’t traveling on it that day.

The presidential cars include an office, conference room and other facilities, according to the Blue House. They are off-limits to the public.

The presidential cars were among the front four cars that didn’t derail and weren’t damaged.

An official from Korail said it was still waiting to find out the exact reason for the accident. Korail said the repairmen weren’t regular workers for the state-run railroad corporation, but were hired from a private company temporarily.

“According to our working system, outside temporary workers rarely report any malfunctions to the center directly,” an official from Korail said. “And it appears the repairmen on Friday didn’t report the problems in the switching box to the center as well.”

Korail has increasingly hired temporary repairmen. Its union argues the practice could threaten the safety of passengers on trains, an official from the union said.

“We believe that the derailment was caused because Korail is increasingly outsourcing its repair work to private contractors, not inspecting tracks and facilities with its own workers,” an official from the labor union said. “An overall re-evaluation of the safety of trains and the repair work should be done soon.”

All KTX trains are now running on normal schedules.

Train driver refused to work because his seat was damp

FROM: The Telegraph

DATE: 11/02/2011

AUTHOR: n/a

The driver on the Southeastern train from Hastings in East Sussex to London 'categorically refused' to take to his seat after finding out it was soaked through.

But instead of putting a jacket over the wet patch or seeking a solution to the 'crisis', the driver walked off – leaving hundreds of commuters forced to wait another 30 minutes to get to work.

Managers at Southeastern – which was slammed by passengers last month after diverting a commuter train through a giant train wash – admitted that 'water had got into the cabin' and the driver was 'unable to sit' on the damp seat.

Angry commuters, however, failed to see why the driver couldn't have simply put his waterproof jacket over the seat before setting off.

Gemma Ellis, 34, said: "What is really annoying is that this driver point blank refused to get in the train.

"As soon as he realised his seat was wet that was it – it was game over as far as he was concerned and he just walked off – I dare say to sit about and have a cup of tea."

The advertising boss, who was stranded with hundreds of others last month, added: "We all had to stand around and wait for the next train half-an-hour later – it was ridiculous."

Fellow commuter Alistair McLuskie said: "It's an absolute joke. I wouldn't normally complain if the train is just a bit delayed, but this was unbelievable.

"It's just another thing in a long list of Southeastern's failures.

"We're supposed to be living in the 21st century, not the 19th century."

Lionel Shields, the secretary of the Tonbridge Line Commuters – a voluntary group set up to protect the welfare of passengers – said the company's actions were 'farcical'.

He said: "I think it's a bit farcical. I don't really know what to say.

"One would have thought that there were procedures to follow in all such circumstances.

"Cancelling a train has rather a serious effect on commuters' journeys. One would hope the rail company is penalised in some way for the draconian course of action."

Bosses at Southeastern said the driver's seat had 'become wet' after water got in a 'faulty window' when the locomotive went through a train wash.

A spokeswoman for Southeastern said: "It may seem like a fairly trivial and strange incident.

"We are investigating what the situation was because obviously we go round and check the windows are up, so this sort of thing doesn't happen.

"The water did get into the cabin and did soak the inside of the cabin.

"Unfortunately, when you're driving the train, from our staff's perspective, going on a shift and having to stand for hours on end isn't practical for the driver to do."

Queen catches train back to London after winter break

FROM: The Telegraph

DATE: 07/02/2011

AUTHOR: n/a

The Queen was travelling back to London by train today after her mid-winter break in Norfolk.

She caught the scheduled 10.59 First Capital Connect service from King's Lynn to King's Cross as she made her way from the Royal Sandringham Estate, near King's Lynn, to Buckingham Palace.

First Capital Connect said the Queen, who is 84, travelled first class at the front of the four-carriage train and would have paid £47.20 - or £31.50 if she used a senior citizens' railcard.

A spokesman said the train left on time and arrived in London at 12.32 - a minute earlier than scheduled.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh spent Christmas and New Year on the royal estate at Sandringham, near King's Lynn.

One onlooker said the Queen arrived at the station with a royal protection officer and smiled at railway staff before boarding a first-class carriage.

On Sunday, around 200 people gathered to see her attend a church service on the 59th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

The Queen chatted to well-wishers and accepted flowers from children after the service at the St Peter and St Paul Church in West Newton, near Sandringham, with the Duke of Edinburgh.

George VI - the Queen's father - died in his sleep early on February 6 1952 while staying at Sandringham.

Royal gun salutes are usually fired around the country on Accession Day.

This year salutes were fired at noon on Monday because Accession Day fell on a Sunday.

Britain's youngest train driver is just 17

FROM: Metro

DATE: 01/02/2011

AUTHOR: n/a

Alex Clements has celebrated becoming the country’s youngest train driver, at the age of 17.

The miniature steam train in Exbury Gardens in the New Forest that he drives has carried the Queen – and it took him three years of training before he was allowed to take charge on his own.

His passion for trains runs in the family as his father is a rail engineer.

And he hopes to take his skills onto mainline services – but he’ll have to wait until he’s 21 before he can take the test.

‘It’s funny as I can’t even drive a car yet, hopefully I’ll pass that test too,’ said the teenager from Marchwood, Hampshire.

'The Queen visits the gardens every now and again and it’s my ambition to have her aboard my train.

'The oldest driver here is 84, so there is quite a big difference in our ages.'

Swiss trains are victim of own success

FROM: Swissinfo

DATE: 02/01/2011

AUTHOR: Luigi Jorio

Despite the excellent reputation of Swiss public transport, rush-hour overcrowding may lead the authorities to make tough decisions that will not be popular.

Raising the ticket price during peak hours is one of the solutions on the table, while another is an expansion of services offered by the Swiss Federal Railways.

A typical day begins badly for many commuters. Seats are often only available for people who are lucky enough to get on the train at the first station.

And in the biggest Swiss cities, like Zurich and Geneva, the trams can be so crowded that it’s even considered a privilege to get inside the door, instead of having to wait for the next one to come along.

Half of the 900,000 customers who take Swiss trains every day do so during morning and evening rush hour, according to Alessandro Malfanti, spokesman for the Federal Railways.

“By 2030, demand will increase by 50 per cent, and by 100 per cent in the urban centres around Zurich and along the Lake Geneva corridor,” Malfanti said.

However, public transport expert Ulrich Weidmann says overcrowding at rush hour is nothing new in Switzerland.

“What’s new is the increase in commuters travelling long distances, such as between Zurich and Bern [125km] and Geneva and Lausanne [63km],” the professor at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) told swissinfo.ch.

Lifestyle
This change in lifestyle, Weidmann added, is a consequence of the introduction of significant reforms as part of the Rail 2000 project, which has led to more frequent and better connections between towns and cities.

The Public Transport Association is looking at various solutions to resolve the problem. The umbrella group, which includes the Federal Railways as its largest member, is considering granting retired people discounts for journeys starting after 9am or revising the entire public transport tariff system.

The latter is being investigated by a research team at St Gallen University. The experts are not excluding higher prices in general for rush hour trains. But the team’s Christian Lässer says this rise would be less for regular commuters than for occasional travellers.

While the findings of the university study will not be published until later in 2011, in an interview with the Le Matin newspaper, Lässer made his disapproval clear of people travelling unnecessarily during rush hour.

This same goes for Weidmann, pointing to pensioners in particular. “We shouldn’t only blame them – everyone has the right to travel. And how do you decide which journey is important and which is not? Many pensioners must, for example, go to the doctors [at a pre-determined time].

No choice
Weidmann does not think it is possible to influence the demand or encourage people to use the train at less busier times of the day. “In Zurich, people work fixed hours. They don’t have a choice,” he said.

He says the solution lies at the technical and operational level. “We need to be able to change the services offered by the railways and increase train frequency and passenger capacity on the busiest lines,” Weidmann said.

However he adds that it will not be easy implementing such changes in the current system since the timetable introduced as part of Rail 2000 integrates all rail and bus services across the country.

“The result is a very rigid and interconnected system in which it is difficult to make specific changes such as increasing the frequency of trains at certain times of the day or on well-defined routes.”

Malfanti of the Federal Railways says political considerations must also be taken into account when discussing how to cope with passenger increases, since the Federal Railways are state owned.

It is parliament which decides on financing of rail infrastructure. The railways spokesman says this will be “one of the biggest challenges facing Switzerland in the years to come”.

The discussion on the future of public transport will focus on the price of train tickets and rail passes. According to the experts, prices are too low.

“They could be at least 15 per cent higher,” Weidmann believes, concluding that such a move would not risk alienating rail passengers.

“Only a minority of them would choose to commute by car instead since parking is a problem in urban centres and trains are the fastest means of travelling between cities.”

Luigi Jorio, swissinfo.ch
(Adapted from Italian by Dale Bechtel)

Queen takes scheduled train to Sandringham

FROM: Daily Express

DATE: 18/12/2010

AUTHOR: Richard Palmer

WRAPPED up against the cold in a patterned red headscarf and overcoat, the Queen took a scheduled train to King's Lynn today to begin her Christmas break at Sandringham.

She and Prince Philip travelled on the 10.45 service from London King's Cross, sitting in a cordoned-off First Class compartment on £86 return tickets for the hour and 35-minute journey.

As Philip, 89, stretched out on one side, reading a newspaper, the Queen, 84, sat sharing a joke with a detective across the aisle, as other passengers joined the train at the London station.

To all intents and purposes, they looked like any other ordinary, slightly well-to-do couple travelling on the service.

But their arrival at King's Cross in a green Daimler with a police back-up Range Rover behind them 15 minutes before their scheduled departure caused mayhem for other passengers.

Police blocked access to three platforms at the busy station, meaning a couple of dozen angry passengers missed their trains while others were told they were too late to get onto the King's Lynn service, only for that decision to be rescinded a few moments later after some had left the station.

Businessman Mark Saywell was among those prevented from getting onto the platforms and missed the 10.36 to his hometown station, St Neots, Cambridgeshire. "I am a little bit disappointed, to say the least," he said sarcastically. "I had my Christmas party last night and I just want to get to bed. I've got another hour's wait now."

The journey marks the start of a seven-and-a-half week stay at Sandringham for the Queen, who always remains there until just after February 6, the day in 1952 that her father died and she acceded to the throne.

Prince William and Kate Middleton are expected to see her at the 20,000 acre estate this weekend. But the couple will not be there on Christmas Day, as William will be on duty at RAF Valley on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales, where he works as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.

In the coming days, most other senior members of the Royal Family will gather at Sandringham for the festive season.

Fitzhugh turns down Jets to keep job as conductor

FROM: The Associated Press

DATE: 08/12/2010

AUTHOR: Dennis Waszak Jr.

NEW YORK (AP) — Keith Fitzhugh chose operating trains over a shot at a Super Bowl.

The free-agent safety turned down an offer to join the New York Jets to remain a conductor with Norfolk Southern Railroad and stay on track financially while helping support his parents in Atlanta.

"I've got something now where I know every two weeks I'm getting a paycheck," Fitzhugh told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday night. "That's what helps out the most right now. I don't knock the Jets at all. I highly appreciate them."

Jets coach Rex Ryan said the team was looking to sign a safety after Jim Leonhard was lost for the season last week with a broken shin and James Ihedigbo suffered a leg injury in New York's 45-3 loss to New England on Monday night. New York has only two safeties — Eric Smith and Brodney Pool — listed on its roster.

The 24-year-old Fitzhugh, who had stints in camp with the Jets the past two years, was contacted by the team but declined New York's offer to return.

"You don't hear this too often and some people might think it's not a good idea," Fitzhugh said. "Some people might think it is. I don't know. I just have to look out for what's best for me and my family."

Fitzhugh's decision was first reported by The Star-Ledger of Newark.

"To sacrifice what he did for his family is the most unselfish thing I've heard by a player in sports," said Daniel Rose, Fitzhugh's agent. "It's really impressive."

Fitzhugh's father, Keith Sr., is disabled and unable to work, while his mother, Meltonia, has been struggling to make ends meet.

"I know the Jets have a great opportunity of making the Super Bowl, and that's one dream that every child has is to play sports and make it to the Super Bowl or get to the World Series," Fitzhugh said. "But, there's a time when you have to think, 'Hey, you've only got one Mom and Dad.' They won't be here forever, and while they're here, you've got to cherish that time."

Fitzhugh went undrafted after an outstanding career at Mississippi State and signed last year with the Jets as a free agent. He was later cut and signed to the practice squad before Baltimore signed him last December. He re-signed with the Jets in the offseason.

"I was released three times. That's a lot," he said. "I just don't want to give up what I have now and say that I'm there for a couple of weeks and then I'm released again. Then, what am I going to do? It's really tough. It's the nature of the business."

Fitzhugh, who keeps in touch with a few former Jets teammates, has been working for Norfolk Southern Railroad for three months.

"I don't want to let them down or run from them because I got a shot for a couple of weeks," he said. "I just feel that that's not right at the moment. I'm looking more long-term in life right now than the short-term."

Fitzhugh said he has been blessed to work with his two childhood passions: football and trains. He also keeps close watch on his former team, to see if he still recognizes the defensive schemes Ryan is running.

"It's tough because I would love to say, 'Hey, I'm going to go out there and get it again,' but it's about a risk," he said. "Is it the end of my NFL career forever? I don't know. This is what I need to do right now."

70,000 commuters delayed by quarrel over cell phone on train in Chiba

TESTATA: Japan Today

DATA: 08/12/2010

AUTORE: n/a

ICHIKAWA - An argument on a Sobu line local train caused turmoil for tens of thousands of passengers in Chiba Prefecture on Tuesday morning. The incident involved two men arguing over the use of cell phones and caused the train to be delayed, which in turn affected dozens of other services running in both directions.

According to Ichikawa police, the incident started at around 6:40 a.m. Two office workers were sitting in the priority seats, speaking on their cell phones when another man sitting opposite them scolded them for their bad manners. He told them to get off at the next station and finish their call there, witnesses said.

One of the pair reportedly took exception to the suggestion and a dispute broke out. When the train pulled in to Ichikawa station, another passenger disembarked and sounded the emergency alarm situated on the platform.

The two men continued to argue on the platform. The man who had been admonished for using his cell phone called the police and accused the other man of assault, alleging that the latter had seized him by the wrist. The pair were taken to the police station and underwent questioning after which they apparently reconciled.

According to JR East, the quarrel caused delays to 47 services on the Sobu line, the maximum delay being 19 minutes which affected 28 services. JR East estimates that some 70,000 commuters were affected.

A Subway Trip Back in Time

FROM: The New York Times

DATE: 06/12/2010

AUTHOR: Emily S. Rueb

Passengers waiting on the downtown F train platform at the Broadway-Lafayette station on Sunday were stunned when the train approached. Instead of the silver bullet that they expected, an ancient-looking, olive-drab metal box lumbered into the station. When it ground to a halt and the doors opened, men dressed in orange reflective vests hopped out to announce that this was the F train, making all local stops.

The cars on the train — model R1 through R9, for you rail fanatics out there — date back to the 1930s.

In what is now an annual holiday treat from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, they are hauled out of storage at the Transit Museum and at rail yards around the city and given a little bit of exercise on Sundays from Thanksgiving to Christmas to keep them in working order.

“It’s like an automobile,” said Greg Gil, a retired engineer who was one of several volunteers answering confused and curious passengers’ questions. “You have to keep running it.” The R1 through R9 trains ran on the Independent Line and last saw regular service in 1977, the transportation authority said.

As the eight-car train sat at the Second Avenue stop before turning around for the journey to Queens Plaza, passengers walked through the cars, holding onto the triangular grips and pointing out the period advertisements, which included a poster for S&W coffee and a did-you-know backgrounder on the Port of New York Authority, then in its relative infancy.

One woman, like many others, chose to linger on the rattan benches. “I could have transferred to another train, but I chose to stay on this one instead,” she said to Mr. Gil.

But not everyone on the platform was surprised to see the vintage train. One man, dressed in a black jacket and porkpie hat, a matching maroon bow tie and trousers, sat still on a red vinyl bench as his companion crouched uncomfortably on the floor across the way, trying to get the perfect shot.

Constantino Diaz-Duran, a freelance writer, knew that the trains would provide the perfect backdrop for a leisurely photo shoot, so he dressed up for the occasion. His companion, Chris Kilmer, who works at ABC News, was trying to get a handle on a pricey new digital SLR camera.

“We have to come up with reasons to justify its expense,” he said. (Mr. Diaz-Duran has graciously shared his photo set with us on his Facebook page).

If you want to catch one of the trains next Sunday, the M.T.A. has posted the departure schedule. The train will make all local stops.