Author: Oliver BroadbentPage 10 of 10
For my first time on stage at Science Showoff back in November 2011, I decided to recreate the famous public demonstration conducted by engineer Benjamin Baker to reassure…
Pushing a pram, as is my new daily habit, has made me much more aware of the relative accessibility or inaccessibility of London. Today I decided the best…
This week we took our 5-month old by Eurostar to Paris. The experience of travelling with a baby is adding a new perspective to my journeys. Long-distance train…
I feel like a bit of a wally standing here in the rain at Clapham High Street Overground station. There are many shorter ways to get me home, which…
Being set mostly in London, the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, takes us an action-packed tour of some the city’s great engineering projects: disused Underground tunnels, Bazalgette‘s embankment…
Last year for Cloud Cuckoo Land and this year for Shambala, I’ve taken the train most of the way, and covered the final leg by bike. Often the…
For all the publicity in London about the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, passengers leaving Paris on its inaugural day wouldn’t have been any…
Last Tuesday evening I bid farewell to Waterloo International, the last day that Eurostar will serve this station before it transfers to St Pancras ‘in the (other) heart…
Every omelette* has a story to tell. The first omelette was in Istanbul. It was on a Wednesday morning, having just arrived by train by a round about…
Since my last post, I have been rather busy! The lack of posts on this blog since then can be attributed in part to the large amount of…
Going home from work is always such a pleasure when it’s such a beautiful day… On my way home through Gare de Lyon I saw three stilt walkers…
This Monday I did “le pont”, which is when French employers give their staff an extra day off between the weekend and a bank holiday, in this case,…
It’s not just about the trains. It’s about the track, the gentle curves, the tunnels, the soaring bridges… click this link to fly the route of the TGV…
Choose life, choose reducing your carbon footprint, choose highspeed train travel instead of flying Thank you SNCF, for making trainspotting cool, at least for a day. Yesterday, a…
As part of the preparations for the eagerly anticipated TGV Est-Européen, which will operate from June 10th between Paris and Strasbourg, the SNCF are hoping to break their…
I have my cousin Ralph (of Stringfever fame – see link to the left, under music) to thank for that piece of advice, which makes me laugh each…
Thursday 2nd November – Friday 3rd November The platform at Sofia station from which my train was due to leave was lit only by the dingy light coming…
Thursday 2nd November Regular readers of this blog may be either frustrated that I have not posted any entries recently. Or thy may think I got lost in…
Wednesday 1st Novemeber – Thursday 2nd November Half an hour later than expected the Belgrade Sofia express night train creaked its way out of the station in the…
Wednesday 1st November Having decided upon taking a detour via Bulgaria, I embarked upon finding out some basics about the country before my train that evening. My first…
Tuesday 31st I first went to Belgrade in this summer enroute to Greece with Mary so I already knew bearings in the city. After a very agreeable lie…
Sunday 29th October The Gard de l’Est is my favourite of Paris’ railway stations because of the desitnations on its departure boards: Strasbourg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna……