Of trains and teleportation
August 27th, 2006Teleportation works, I can testify. Not just for elementary particles in eccentric quantum physics experimental setups, but for real people complete with clothes and luggage and all. As a matter of fact, it has existed for a long time. It is I who only just realised last week; this revolutionary transportation system is called a sleeping car: I fell asleep in one place and woke up 800 km from there, with no memory of the voyage. A pure and simple relativistic leap in time-space. And with a good night’s sleep, I felt almost younger after the journey than on the previous evening when I had boarded the teleport.
I am so glad France still has a comprehensive and efficient railroad network. It makes travelling so much easier.
Do not misunderstand my words: I love airplanes, I really do, but on short hops, they are really not up to the task. Take the Paris-Marseilles trip, for instance: 800km, either covered ‘instantly’ in a sleeping car, or in three hours on a high-speed train; city-center to city-center. As a comparison, flying there takes at least four hours: one hour flight-time, and the rest wasted in trifles like public transport to get to the airport, margin for check-in, boarding, push-back, taxi-out and queuing with dense ground traffic, disembarking, retrieving luggage, and again public transport.
My liking for trains will probably turn into a full-fledged passion as fossil fuel prices continue to grow: the price ratio between air travel and rail will increase dramatically. I am almost certain that France’s costly railroad infrastructure — artificially maintained alive for years willy-nilly on a constant IV of taxpayer’s money — will finally pay off, by making our economic system less dependent on fossil fuel, and thus attracting investments. This will probably give ideas to those who still have a railway culture. It will certainly give sour regrets to those who dumped theirs as a remnant of the past, not unlike the feelings of an old farmer who just dumped a weathered oaken cupboard and replaced it with flimsy IKEA stuff as a tribute to modernity, when he finds out how much the old one was worth.
I agree wholeheartedly about trains being the way to travel. Whenever I’ve been in Europe I loved getting on the train! What always struck me about them, however, was your ability to still feel a passage through the landscape.
I remember taking the train from Oslo to Bergen and seeing the change in landscape from coast to the tundra of the plains. Watching the neighborhoods of Vienna go by on the tram. Teleportation I think is best left to elevators and airplanes! You’re sealed in a container and emerge at the other end, with no connection to the journey.
My feelings on this no doubt arise from living in rural Canada, where train service is more an oddity than a dependable method of transportation. Ironically the older people remember when the train WAS the only way to go, and there are still some place names with ‘Siding’ and ‘Station’ appended to them.
Thank you for your kind words on my last post, I’ve quite enjoyed reading your observations!
Doug
Ahhh, yes: the sleeper car. Bob and I did something in the summer of 2005 to celebrate our ten-year-anniversary that most of our American friends couldn’t understand: we took the train (sleeper car) all the way from New York to Santa Fe, NM. It took us two days, and I was in 7th heaven. Unfortunately, that sort of teleportation in this country is VERY rare.
It must have been quite a trip indeed. The longest train trip I took was 29 hours through former East Germany.
The funny part is that people believe airplanes are much faster, but for those who tend to fly only for winter holidays, it is not so rare to be stranded two days in an airport while some snow or ice havoc subsides.