otrain !! thank you otrain

Exciting news: TTC has awarded a contract to Hitachi for its SelTrac communications based train control (CBTC) on line 2 (according to the announcement, including on Metrolinx’s Scarborough Subway Extension). This will enable reliability, speed, and frequency improvements. @ttcriders.bsky.social

Steve Munro@swanboatsteve.bsky.social · 3w ago

The TTC selects Hitachi as supplier of Automatic Train Control on Line 2, but the benefits are a decade away. stevemunro.ca/2026/07/15/t...

Q1 2026 USCA commuter rail ridership update: - RTO policy is bringing up ridership overall - Caltrain electrification has grown ridership 70% - Only GO has exceeded prepandemic numbers; ridership grew 8.5% while local transit ridership fell ~5%

It's been a couple years but I want to start writing Wikipedia pages for the London Clay birds again

Alberta Claw@albertonykus.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Review of Eocene birds from the Walton Member of the London Clay Formation in England: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Mayr)

Review of Eocene birds from the Walton Member of the London Clay Formation in England: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Mayr)

Beside the viaduct carrying the Harbin-Qiqihar HSL and Harbin-Manzhouli railway through central Harbin there's a commemorative hall for the China Eastern Railway. The railway defines Northeast China the way the way the CPR does Western Canada and almost single-handedly drove its settlement.

This is really the key question with respect to railroads in all countries that were industrialized before wwii. So few places and people have ventured an actual answer to this question in the last century though. Beeching and Spinetta ventured one answer; the DACH countries have tried another

Nilo@nilo.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In the end this almost always comes back to the long tail of low ridership lines that every country that industrialized before internal combustion engines has, and most haven't figured out what they want out of them. (Credit to the Swiss and Austrians in contrast here.)

For Canada I feel this is Montreal because the REM took the tunnel and the second tunnel will almost certainly be filled with high-speed intercities. Maybe connecting Mont St Hilaire to Lucien L'Allier but that also is a new bridge/tunnel.

Nilo@nilo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

What is the largest city in your country you could not imagine an RER or Crossing style service working? A RER style service is defined as: 1. Uses the legacy railroad network 2. Goes through the center of the city forming a coherent axis of stops

think Hyundai's extremely deep involvement in the Samseong Station mega-project -- part of a giant Hyundai-fication in the area -- is very interesting in itself. quite exemplary on how Seoul's urbanism gets built out and up, and the negotiations that come with it www.koreaherald.com/article/1065...

How Hyundai Motor's ambitious GBC project finally moved forward

Following more than ten years of delays, redesigns and contentious negotiations, Hyundai Motor Group’s stalled headquarters project in southern Seoul has finall

koreaherald.com

sick public transit, gloria@seung.bsky.social · 3mo ago

big scandal in the Korean rail industry this past week: nearly half of planned metal rebars inside concrete beams to uphold the underground GTX Samseong Station platform is missing, per MBC, raising structural integrity questions on the mega-project www.youtube.com/watch?v=Insh...

winter was not very long ago

i got the book. more fushun electric railway knowledge is Coming

kaptrice 🐦‍⬛@kaptrice.bsky.social · 9mo ago

For decades, China's only electrified suburban railway was a 300km-system in Fushun, an industrial city of a little over a million in Liaoning province. I wrote a little about it: kaptrice.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

sitting down to dinner to be served with the mantetsu plates

Changchun-Harbin(?) express passing through Shuangchengpu station

excellent, comprehensive examination into Japan's railway successes by @borners.bsky.social ky.social and @carto-graph.bsky.social. was flattered they linked to a couple of my Japan railway history posts on Substack to reinforce their many good points worksinprogress.co/issue/why-ja...

Why Japan has such good railways - Works in Progress Magazine

Japan's railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.

worksinprogress.co

Thinking about Toronto's trains: every delivery to Davisville or Greenwood (i.e. every train from 1954 to 2001) was by rail, but the TRs, which arrived at Wilson, weren't. Streetcars have always arrived by rail to Hillcrest, and Line 5 LRVs by rail to EMSF.

Brendan Dawe@dawe.bsky.social · 5mo ago

It offends me that trains are not delivered on trains

Finally Korea will get high-quality Google Maps. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

South Korea set to finally get a fully functioning Google Maps

South Korea will soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps doesn't work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-...

reuters.com

Mac the squirrel :)@macsquirelera.bsky.social · last yr.

Korea doesn’t show up on western mapping apps, and it doesn’t have the sheer size of China

This, continual procurement, is the one reform to US federal vehicle procurement I want. We need structures that allow continual fleet renewal at 1/x lifespan, not bulk purchases every 30 years that inherently have big issues.

donoteat@donoteat.bsky.social · 5mo ago

honestly i think we just have to embrace some diseconomies and order 15-20 cars at a time for several years as amtrak slowly expands the system

My research article “Quantitative Method for Assessing the Quality of Intermodal/Interagency Connections and Service Integration at Suburban Rail Stations” has been published in the @trb.org Transportation Research Record. This is based on my MASc @uoft.me on coordination between transit services.

How is commuter rail in the US and Canada faring? It depends! In terms of ridership recovery, Toronto, Boston, and the LIRR lead, while Chicago and Los Angeles lag far behind. Caltrain modernisation has brought the system far ahead of it's region's metro, BART.

North American commuter rail ridership through 2025 shows a couple of upwards trends: -LIRR benefitting from expanded City Ticket, congestion pricing, ESA. -GO improved off peak service. -Caltrain reinvigoration

The discussion about "modular" construction would be a lot more lucid if we viewed it as an extreme on the prefabrication spectrum. There's lots of prefab already viable (like this!) – and we can make it more viable!

Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · 5mo ago

Some Kitchener-Waterloo content for the precast construction enjoyers @kaptrice.bsky.social @stephenjacobsmith.com

waiting so diligently for the analyst at APTA to upload the q4 ridership report so i can know how canadian systems are holding up

Suprematism, by Nikolai Suetin, 1920-21, 📸 by @tiltoncreative

And before the wars, Korea strangely functioned as an agri-colony of Japan, where much of the rice crop was exported for Japanese consumption and the lost calories substituted with Manchurian coarse grain imports.

sick public transit, gloria@seung.bsky.social · 5mo ago

since the Korean War, SK struggled to feed its population enough rice using existent short grain Japonica strain. Park Chung-hee had scientists hybridize popular Japonica strains with the long-grain Indica strain to introduce the Tongil ("Reunification") rice which had higher yields in 1971

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OkB... Toronto in 8mm. Line 1, Line 2, Line 5, Kitchener Line and UP Express.

toronto in the evening

YouTube video by subzi

youtube.com

when the eglinton line was conceived, 8mm video was fading but still in broad use. so, here's eglinton on tape

This issue actually destroyed US transit. So many trams might still exist if there had been a 7.5¢ coin in 1920

Rachel Cole@rmartincole.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Sewoon Sangga has been long an obsession of mine. A massive complex of brutalist shopping mall buildings which span four wide blocks in a straight north-south line from Jongmyo Shrine to Namsan Mountain, it pioneered the Seoul as we know it -- and has lived many lives during its steady decline 🧵

sick public transit, gloria@seung.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New S(ubstack)-Bahn post: I take a historical tour into two of my favorite buildings in Seoul, located across the street from e/o. I look into chi energy, the spiritual afterlife, fights over zoning, gentrification, and Seoul's uncertain future. www.substack-bahn.net/p/a-tour-in-...

Review of the diet of troodontid dinosaurs: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Fan et al.)

the Fushun municipal government proposed reviving the old local electric railways as part of an integrated (light?) rail loop, integrating with the old Shenyang-Jilin railway, for the 14th 5 Year Plan. It looks ridiculous on a map. corridor reuse final boss