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rfmcdonaldIt's nice to see that higher-profile bloggers than me, like Alex Harrowell at A Fistful of Euros, couldn't resist making end-of-year posts about trains as metaphors. The Orient Express, Alex writes, has just made its last trip, and that's probably a good thing since that symbolizes the disappearance of the "Orient.".
Some train routes might be best put down once they've outlived their utility. Others remain as useful and central as ever, like, say, the Yonge-University-Spadina line of the subway, accessible among other places via the upper level of Bloor-Yonge Station. I took some pictures there on the morning on the 29th, and was pleased and unsurprised to see that it still has the same dynamism that I glimpsed decades ago in the music video for the Spoons' "Downtown Traffic".
The reason why the service is being withdrawn is optimistic; the high-speed trains now go so far and so fast that you can get from London to Vienna in a day by rail (although, rather you than me - it leaves at 0827 and arrives at 2322 with connections in Brussels and Frankfurt, a long day’s train ride by anyone’s standards). And, of course, if they have power sockets, WLAN, and a rail to hang your jacket on, like the business sections on Swiss trains, you’ll be able to conspire just as much if not more.
Thinking about it, the experience wasn’t something that foretold the future, but rather a hangover from the recent past. Sleeping Car Guy, like the huge, filthy Südbahnhof in Vienna with its parallel network of long distance buses into the Balkans, was a leftover of immediate post-Cold War Europe - something of the spirit I tried to convey in this post.
Some train routes might be best put down once they've outlived their utility. Others remain as useful and central as ever, like, say, the Yonge-University-Spadina line of the subway, accessible among other places via the upper level of Bloor-Yonge Station. I took some pictures there on the morning on the 29th, and was pleased and unsurprised to see that it still has the same dynamism that I glimpsed decades ago in the music video for the Spoons' "Downtown Traffic".
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