When looking at historic routes across the Alps it is interesting to contrast it with modern trans-alpine traffic. What are the top 5 routes across the Alps today? Here it is worth noting that we have road and rail routes today. Even if they often run in parallel, there are interesting exceptions. Let’s look at …
Imagine a railway pulling super-heavy trains across a mountain range in the Arctic. That’s the Ore Line from Kiruna to Narvik. There are several ways you can explore this impressive route. Iron ore from the mine at Kiruna in Swedish Lapland is shipped by this railway for more than 100 years now to the ice-free …
The railway bridge across the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh in Scotland is one of the most iconic bridges in the world. During my last visit to Scotland I enjoyed spending some time taking pictures of the historic Forth Bridge. South Queensferry at the southern end of the bridge is a small town less than …
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway in the jungle of Southern India has the steepest slope of any railway in Asia. What is the reason that a railway line was built through such difficult terrain? As the name suggests, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway connects Mettupalayam on the plains of southern India with Ooty (or Udhagamandalam) in the …
Melbourne was neither the biggest nor the oldest city in the Australian colonies in 1854. Yet on 12. September of that year the inhabitants gathered to watch cutting edge technology in their town. The opening of the first railway line in Australia. Let’s take a closer look why modern transportation made its way to that …
In Panama, the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are only about 60 km apart. This makes the isthmus a truly strategic location for global transportation. A hundred years ago the Panama Canal was opened and since then allows ships go directly from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. This obviously was not possible …
When you drive through Welkenraedt/Herbesthal today it looks like a typical Belgium village. You might notice some German signs though and if you look closer, you will find that streets on one side of the main street have German names and there are French names on the other side. The main street itself is called …
