I was not directing any sarcasm at the French in order to belittle their railway achievements, or to try to elevate the US railway situation. I do not like the French. We saved their butts in two World Wars and they can not bring themselves to forgive us. I know, I worked with them. Therefore, they can kiss my you know what. And anyone else who doesn’t like it can lump it.
And the US is perfectly capable of building an excellent rail system. Just look at the one in Japan, paid for with US dollars.
(Quote from Peter Josserand’s Rights of Trains: “Extra trains will display two white flags an in addition two white lights by night, in the places provided for that purpose on the front of the engine.”)
Of course, maybe he has no need to run work trains, snow plows, Sperry test cars, rail grinders…[:-^]
Don’t know that we couldn’t do it. How many french flags are on the moon?
But it used special engines, a very small train that wasn’t loaded and they raised the voltage in the lines above normal and it was probably for a relatively brief stretch of tangent track. Its not something that they could do with a normal trainset under normal conditions.
Not at all. We actually have a longer high speed system, with more tracks. But since our high speed system was designed 100 years ago it has too many curves to operate comfortably to the passengers over 150 mph or so (even though we proved it could operate at speed in excess of that in the late 1960’s).
The Amtrak Acela trainsets are basically TGV’s. I had a friend who worked on the Acela program. The TGV windows leak, the Amtrak units had the fairings over the roof and underbody peieces keep blowing off, the brakes weren’t up to a system with as many stops as the NEC and they had lots of other problems with them that nobody will talk about. If the French weren’t the low bidder, the Acela sets would have been Swedish. Better technology.
I don’t know, I thought that was the normal speed of those old Tyco F units. Certainly some of the early Bachmann U28’s I had in N-scale approached that. And then there are all those Lionel locomotives. And more recently the Tyco Turbo-Trains.
Okay, now you’re making it worse. When was the last time we went to the Moon? JFK announced the plan in 1962. Seven years later, we were there. Think we could do that today? Sure. We’re still flying spacecraft with 30-year-old technology!
France’s railroads were around long ago. They just saw their value, whereas this country hasn’t.
Do you know any French people? Have you ever been to France? I think this is just blind hatred on your behalf. Unless the French raped your mother or murdered your little sister I don’t see the purpose of your hatred. TheFrench are only rude to you if you come to their country and insist on speaking to them in English. But even if you speak to them in the crappiest French, they’ll love you for it. I’m SURE a person like you has treated many a foreigner rudely.
FERGIE: At that speed, I could be in Nova Scotia in 1:15 hours!!! Worcester to Boston, Boston to Calais, Maine, Calais Maine through New Brunswick to Nova Scotia!!!
Yep, if it wasnt for the French, their Army and their Navy, we’de still be saying things like “Sorry old chap! Thats just bollacks” Drinking our beer warm and have bad dental hygene.
Of course we did repay them by exporting our revolution to them which gave their king a very very short haircut…and in the chaos afterwords led to the rise of the first modern military nutjob dictator, Napoleon Bonapart, who did to the rest of Europe what sadly became a roadmap for the first 1/2 of the 20th century, talk about the unforseen consiquences of signing that paper on July 4, 1776
Utter nonsense. If you’re going to make wildly inaccurate statements about Japanese railroad history, do it when nobody knowledgable is around.
The men who pioneered railroads in Japan were from England, Germany and Norway, or were locals trained by these men. American influence and finance during the period of expansion was minimal.
Work on the Shinkansen network started before WW2. Not too many US dollars being spent in Japan then, methinks. And the New Tokaido Line was designed, built, operated and maintained by Japanese railroaders, not Americans.
This is the United States of America. ANYBODY can make all the wildly inaccurate statements they want to. Haven’t you listened to any of the presidential candidates? Don’t you watch network news?
I do not hate the French. I would have thought everyone would have picked up the hint when I said no white flags, and I am all steam. I am well aware that Layfayette, Rochambeau and quite a few other Frenchmen were invaluable allies in the Revolutionary War (even though the main reason the French Government got in it was because of “the enemy of my enemy, is my friend” thinking). I realize that without DeGrasse defeating the English fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake, the ONLY major English naval defeat between the days of the Armada and WWII, that Cornwallis would have been reinforced at Yorktown and the outcome would have been seriously in doubt.
I do not hate the Japanese. I have been to Japan. Very ingeneous and hard working likable people. I worked with a Japanese engineer on a very famous book he was writing. I loved the trains. They actually think a schedule means something, a concept that has been totally lost in the United States, and that chaps my a$$ daily on numerous accounts. But, I must give just a little credit for any success they ever achieve in anything, to the nation that beat the ever loving you know what out of them, bombed out 35 square miles of their largest city in one night, and all this after they attacked us, and then rebuilt their whole darned country, wrote them a whole new constitution, helped transform them into a manufacturing giant, and gave them favored nation trade status.
Neither. I’m not an American, your presidential candidates and network news are of no interest to me. Television in Australia is no more than a means of selling dogfood and tampons - I imagine US TV is about the same.
You still have an axe to grind about a war that ended 62 years ago? Why? I very much doubt you were personally involved.
Yeah, far better to leave the place a smoking radioactive ruin, rub their noses in it, and humiliate them so much that twenty years down the track they’re ready to start another war with you, just to even the score.