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Trains: Christian Wolmar in San Francisco
Sep. 17th, 2012 09:45 amI have a subscription to RAIL magazine and follow UK railroading as well as American trains. Christian Wolmar, noted UK transportation writer, does a column in RAIL and has written a number of fascinating books about UK and worldwide railroading. (He's also now declared himself a Labour party candidate for Mayor of London.)
Wolmar's latest book is The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America, and he is giving a talk about the book this Wednesday in San Francisco. When I heard about this talk, I was deeply disappointed, as my schedule had me driving home to Fernley on Wednesday afternoon and working from home there on Thursday and Friday. I mentioned the bad luck to Lisa last night and she encouraged me to rearrange my schedule and go see Wolmar's talk. After all, it's not like there is likely to be another chance to hear him! So I bought a ticket to the talk and will rearrange things so I head to Fernley on Thursday afternoon instead. I might end up having to work on Saturday from Fernley as well since I'll have to leave work early on Wednesday to take Caltrain up to The City for the 6 PM talk at the Mechanics Institute. I need to try and calculate whether I can walk from 4th & King up to Market & Post faster than the net travel time on the N-Judah streetcar, given the latter's circuitous routing.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing Wolmar. Lisa is a little jealous that I get to hear the talk, but she's still feeling too sick to travel. Like Lisa, I don't always agree with Wolmar (I think he's wrong about High Speed 2, for instance), but we both agree that he always makes his case in a clear and cogent manner, so you can have a reasonable debate over issues rather than just a shouting match with sound bites.
And he responded to my Twitter posts mentioning him. Multiple times, even.
Wolmar's latest book is The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America, and he is giving a talk about the book this Wednesday in San Francisco. When I heard about this talk, I was deeply disappointed, as my schedule had me driving home to Fernley on Wednesday afternoon and working from home there on Thursday and Friday. I mentioned the bad luck to Lisa last night and she encouraged me to rearrange my schedule and go see Wolmar's talk. After all, it's not like there is likely to be another chance to hear him! So I bought a ticket to the talk and will rearrange things so I head to Fernley on Thursday afternoon instead. I might end up having to work on Saturday from Fernley as well since I'll have to leave work early on Wednesday to take Caltrain up to The City for the 6 PM talk at the Mechanics Institute. I need to try and calculate whether I can walk from 4th & King up to Market & Post faster than the net travel time on the N-Judah streetcar, given the latter's circuitous routing.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing Wolmar. Lisa is a little jealous that I get to hear the talk, but she's still feeling too sick to travel. Like Lisa, I don't always agree with Wolmar (I think he's wrong about High Speed 2, for instance), but we both agree that he always makes his case in a clear and cogent manner, so you can have a reasonable debate over issues rather than just a shouting match with sound bites.
And he responded to my Twitter posts mentioning him. Multiple times, even.
