by Matthew Cobb
I am returning from London, where I have been talking about my book about the Liberation of Paris (should be available in the US soon, folks!) to Manchester, hurtling through the English countryside at around 100 mph on the train (I can hear the sound of French readers snickering and US readers gasping in amazement). So it’s entirely appropriate that I post this video of the cutisssimo 4-week old kitten that was discovered yesterday on the London underground railway (aka The Tube – it’s because, unlike New York or Paris, the tunnels are very very deep and are tube-shaped).
The kitten – only 4 weeks old they say – has been named Victoria, after the station she was found at. There is a tradition in the UK of naming animals after stations: Paddington Bear, from Darkest Peru, was found at Paddington Station. His life was described by Michael Bond, and Paddington, complete with duffle coat, sou’wester and marmalade sandwiches, haunted my childhood. Victoria may have a similar success, if some canny author decides to write her life story:
Awwww! And by the way, Matthew, I thought Wonders of Life was absolutely brilliant—a magnificent exposition of evolution in its broadest sense. Thanks for the heads-up on this site. It would have been a shame to miss it.
Agreed. It’s a shame that the remake of Cosmos is going to feature Neil deGrasse Tyson instead of Brian Cox.
Not all the US:
http://www.amtrak.com/acela-express-train
The Acela runs at up to 150mph top speed.
Last week I travelled (first time ever) on the original Lyons-Paris TGV route. Very smooth, the speed was deceptive, took two minutes under two hours which is an _average_ of 145mph. Wikipedia gives the top speed as 190mph which would be about right.
I think the US (and UK!) still have a way to go…
DANGER ANORAK DANGER ANORAK
The WCML (of which the Manchester spur is part) can run up to 125 mph if you are in a Pendo ….
Sorry – WCML: West Coast Main Line. The railway that runs from London Euston to the North-West and Glasgow ….
and on HS1 you can run at 140mph.
(Geek alert)
As you have been able to (140mph) on the East Coast Main Line since about 1990. I travelled on that last time I was there 20 years ago. Very impressed by the speed (it actually felt faster than the TGV I just experienced at 190mph – just shows how smooth the TGV’s trackbed is). You know you’re going fast when you try to read the station names as you pass and you can’t (on the TGV I didn’t even try).
I’ve tried to post twice pointing out that the underground and the tube are 2 different things but my posts keep going missing.
The Tube, correctly speaking, refers to the tube lines, Northern, Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo, Jubilee and Victoria. The Underground refers to the whole network including the Sub-Surface lines, Metropolitan, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City as well as the Tube.
You should possibly clarify that the ‘tube’ lines are deep, the ‘sub-surface’ are shallow and were mostly built by cut-n-cover. And they all come up to the surface in the suburbs.
This is a distinction (like ‘train’ and ‘locomotive’) that the public and reporters are always getting wrong.
“Tube” is a term used by TFL for the whole London Underground. If the Tube’s operators make no distinction, there isn’t one.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modalpages/2625.aspx
I was clarifying the distinction that Graham was making, which (IMO) wasn’t apparent from his post.
‘“Tube” is a term used by TFL for the whole London Underground. If the Tube’s operators make no distinction, there isn’t one.’
That doesn’t follow. Even if Transport for London choose not to make a distinction, that doesn’t mean none exists. There is definitely a significant physical distinction, ‘tube’ rolling stock is built to much smaller dimensions than subsurface stock because the tunnels are smaller.
Check out this pic for the difference (and note the title!):”http ://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/London_Underground_subsurface_and_tube_trains.jpg”
(I inserted a gap in the URL so it doesn’t imbed, I hope).
See, anyone can quotemine Wikipedia. 😉
As to common usage, that’s a quagmire I won’t get into (this time).
Really? I’ve lived in the South East of the UK for nearly all of my life and this is the first time I have seen anybody make that distinction. I think you would be hard pressed to find any British person (except yourself maybe) who does not use the terms “Tube” and “London Underground” interchangeably.
Wikipedia has this to say:
“Today in official publicity and in general, the term ‘Tube’ embraces the whole Underground system.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground
Cute kitten — and very well armed, it would appear! Somebody’s Shirley is in for quite a treat — and an armful — to provide her with a forever home.
b&