Charlie StrossRE: https://mastodon.social/@jef/116308472633215904
Can't park there, mate.
Graydon@graydon Just adding that "can't park there, mate" has become a catch-phrase on /r/Edinburgh, usually relating to photos of cars with drivers who blindly followed their Satnav and drove onto the top of a staircase …
@cstross Got that bit!
Parts of the western US there are are active freight lines down city streets plus there are semi-fossil rights-of-way still on streets that are not used very often but the clearances are maintained against the day. This looks like one of those; someone missed a switch, and it's very possible that they really don't want to run the whole freight wherever this bit of track is going. ("The factory that was there closed down in 2003" sorts of circumstances.)
@graydon There was this time in 2018 when Feorag and I were driving from Vancouver to Edmondton and after one particularly late day's driving we were half a kilometre from our hotel in a small town when we ran into a level crossing. And guess what we met, inching slowly across it onto a turning loop then back out again ...
(That was an annoying half hour long wait!)
@cstross I am laughing the laugh of familiarity over here.
(Grew up at a time when Smiths Falls still had rail rolling stock service facilities; trains that were backing at barely perceptible speed through the level crossing were absolutely a thing.)
@graydon I'm kind of glad we don't do long trains in the UK—or level crossings, for that matter: there are still some, but the main thing is to not try and bull through against the lights. The barrier will only be down for 30 seconds before the commuter train blasts through at 100mph ...
@cstross Oh-mother-of-god thirty years ago I was standing on a street corner when someone in a tearing hurry did a left in front of a streetcar ("tram", but not in Toronto; about 27 tonnes) that was just leaving the stop. Can't have been going more than 3 m/s and probably more like 2 when it hit the car.
The car's driver was undamaged but the left front wheel assembly fell off the car when the tow truck hoisted the mangled front end.
Not messing with rail traffic is wise, amen.
@graydon Low speed does not correspond to low energy when there's enough mass involved! (I wouldn't have wanted to be standing on the canal bank when the Ever Given cut loose, either!)
JulesJones@cstross @graydon Ah, the memory of site safety briefings for visitors with gruesome photos of vehicles which had lost an argument with a slow-moving remote controlled train, and the warning "Do not ignore the crossing control lights. Survivors will be dismissed for gross misconduct."
And my husband wonders why I freak out when he plays chicken with a train or tram...
James 🌈💜Metro's safety ad for crossings is still brilliant.
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Tubemeister@cstross @graydon Otoh if you’ve ever seen (or been in) a tram doing a full emergency stop, those things scrub off speed quite impressively despite being 30-odd tons of angry metal.
I don’t miss the office on the Nieuwezijds where the ding-ding-crunch of a car pulling a quick u-turn into a tram was a weekly event.