Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: BR

This is the first of a series of short railfan videos that I took out of train windows while traveling from Cardiff to Prague. "Railfan" is an important qualifier here. I didn't expect any of these videos to be spectacular by themselves, Instead, they're aimed primarily (maybe only) at railfans who like to watch high-speed train videos. Technically, in modern terms, these Intercity 125 diesel trains, introduced in 1976, aren't high-speed in the modern sense. This is because their maximum legal speed is, and has always been, 125 m.p.h., or about 200 km/h, while the threshold for modern high-speed trains is about 210 km/h, set by the Japanese Series 0 bullet trains in 1966. However, the Series 0 bullet trains ran at 200 km/h from 1964 to 1966, and when the Intercity 125 diesel trains were being developed by British Railways in the 1970s, they were referred to as, literally, "High Speed Trains," or HSTs. Today, they're still often called HSTs, and remain some of the fastest diesel trains in the world, 39 years after being introduced to regular service.

This was my train, still worked by an Intercity 125 after all these years. These trainsets date to 1976, but in some respects they're still the most advanced diesel passenger trains in the world. At the moment, I'm also unaware of anything faster than them, although some DMU's and ICE-TD variants can match them.

That last shot wasn't very good, and neither is this one, but here you can see the entirety of the locomotive a bit better. The unit caught me by surprise so I wasn't able to get the cameraphone awake fast enough to get a good shot.

This was my first look at one of the new Class 70 freight diesels, this one working for Freightliner. Actually, these locomotives were already four years old when I took this, but I had been away from Britain for awhile so I hadn't been able to get a photo. They have several interesting facts about them, in addition to the usual specifications. First of all, they're made by General Electric, which would make them the first large order of G.E. diesels in British history, in spite of the popularity of G.E.'s in North America. Being completely authentic G.E.'s, they were built in Erie, PA, just like the Dash 8's I chased as a teenager. Secondly, they are perhaps the first BR class to reuse a previous class number, as 2 SR electrics and one Southern Region BR electric from the 1940's were considered Class 70 electrics under BR. 20 of these units are reported to have been built, although they aren't numbered sequentially, carrying the numbers 70001-70011 and 70013-70023 (Wikipedia says 70001-70011 and 70013-70020, but this makes no sense). There is also a demonstrator numbered 70099, and Freightliner's order is for 30 units, so more will likely be built. GBRf also have expressed interest in buying some of them. Their horsepower rating is 3,690, making them the most powerful diesels ever to be used in Britain (unless someone can correct me), and they are rated for a top speed of 75 m.p.h., which is typical for a G.E. freight diesel.

Here's where it was, just to show I'm not making this story up....

I've forgotten the full details of why I was in Dejvicka on this particular day, but often this is the first Metro station I get to after flying into Praha Ruzyne airport, although such was not the case on this day. Rather, I discovered a BR (British, Network Rail, etc.) train ticket dropped on the platform. Living in a major European city post-Schengen, you see all sorts of tickets from all the EU countries lying on the ground, but I liked this one because it reminded me of Britain. It wasn't the first one I had seen, and it probably won't be the last. I've also seen Paris and Brussels metro tickets lying on the floor of Prague Metro stations.

Here's the data plaque for the ROM.

This immense hard drive, or actually ROM they say it is, helps to illustrate not only how far computers have come, but also how the countries of Eastern Europe were quite sophisticated for their time, as this machine was not vastly inferior to what was available in the West.