Link: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2359481647_a9861a45b2_o.jpg

There's an article on Spacing about TTC plans for renovating subway stations on the Bloor-Danforth line, and how a local font-obsessed citizen, Joe Clark, is up-in-arms about it. I'm more inclined to support preserving the heritage of local McDonald's restaurants over subway stations, so I can't really get on board with Joe's crusade against "fake helvetica" signage on the TTC.

Joe points out an interesting aspect of the station design along the Bloor-Danforth line that, despite my near daily trips from one end of it to the other, I had never noticed before. Station tile colors for stations east and west of downtown match up with each other starting from the center of the line (St. George and Bay stations) all the way to Kennedy and Kipling stations respectively. You can check out this handy chart for an explanation of what stations match one another. I guess it would be kind of a shame to break-up the uniformity of this design, but then again the stations are still pretty ugly on this line and in need of work. I guess either way is fine with me. What would be neat though would be if they added chimes to stations like they do in Tokyo.

Link: http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1946743.php

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I found a bunch of Aomori train related videos on You Tube that perhaps only I would find interesting. For what it's worth, here they are...

This one apears to be some sort of low-budget music video featuring Aomori train station. I think it's called "Many Lover Aomori Station"

There's also lots of fun techno music videos about the trains of Aomori. Here's some of my favorites...

Seikan Tunnel Trains

My personal favorite Aomori train, the Heat 789.

Who needs Maid Cafes when there are train cafes?

Neat Montréal metro commercial from 1976.

Saw this cool video on YouTube today for the first time today:

Sad story eh?

...or maybe not!

...but this one is for sure.

Link: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/france_transport_rail

An experimental TGV train reached 574.8 kph on a specially prepared stretch of track east of Paris. The train was pimped out with with two supercharged locomotives and extra-large wheels. The record smashed the 515.3 kph set by a TGV in 1990. It also just missed the overall world train speed record of 581 kph reached in 2003 by a Japanese maglev train. Since the train will never actually operate with passengers at anything near this speed, the new record doesn't really amount to much. I would be curious to see how a souped-up Fastech 360Z Shinkansen train would fair in a similar speed test.

Here's a dramatic video by TGV to promote their new speed record