Forums: Railway Platform Height

South Africa will open the continent's first high-speed rail link on Tuesday, just in time to whisk a mass influx of World Cup fans Cup from the country's main airport into uptown Johannesburg. The three billion dollar Gautrain project has been dogged by a series of problems since work began in September 2006, including strikes and excavation snags, and only one stretch of the line will open for business this week. But authorities in Gauteng province, the country's economic powerhouse which includes both Johannesburg and Pretoria, say it will help transform the lives of traffic-frazzled commuters and draw in long-term...

Passenger rail, Amtrak in particular, has been a conservative whipping boy for decades. This point of view needs serious re-examination, because national transportation strategy is an issue of US national competitiveness, and passenger rail has a significant role to play. In short, the US has no transportation strategy, while the fragile air transportation network, decaying roads and bridges, crushing highway congestion, and wobbly urban transit systems only add cost and dysfunction to an already struggling economy. A major federal government role in building and maintaining significant national assets that make the country competitive is entirely consistent with conservative philosophy. The...

Kissing banned at Warrington railway station - except in kissing zone 17/02/2009 Kiss under this new railway station sign and you could be in for a right ticketing-off. For killjoy town bosses have banned romantic goodbyes – like the one in weepy movie Brief Encounter – in case shows of affection disrupt departures. And in what some will see as the nanny state gone mad, lovers who can’t resist puckering up must go to a special kissing zone.

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals. In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal , hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems. Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review,...

Mumbai: At least 15 people have been injured in gunfights between two groups in at least three places in Mumbai on Thursday night. Details are sketchy but it is believed that two gangs fired at each other at outside CST Railway Terminus, Hotel Oberoi and the popular Café Leopold restaurant in Mumbai. The first shooting took place near the CST police station

SNIPPET: "A French couple arrested in connection with a series of anarchist attacks on the country's rail network have been linked by the FBI to a bomb attack in New York." ARTICLE SNIPPET: "French anti-terrorist police are holding 10 alleged members of a violent anarchist movement suspected of sabotaging power cables on high speed TGV train lines. But it now transpires that the alleged culprits were netted thanks to information from the FBI, which allegedly linked two of them to the home-made bomb attack on an army recruitment centre in New York's Times Square in March. Julien Coupat, 34, the...

A schoolboy was held as a terrorist suspect by police support officers - for taking photographs of a railway station on a geography field trip.Fabian Sabbara, 15, was dressed in his school uniform when he was stopped by three police community support officers for taking photos of a station on his mobile phone.He explained he was taking pictures, as well as pedestrian counts and a traffic survey, as part of a GCSE project. Fabian Sabbara, 15, was questioned by police support officers when they spotted him taking pictures of Wimbledon station, below But PCSO Barry Reeve told Fabian, from Cheam...