Author Archives: Marcus Wong

Holmestrand – the station deep beneath a mountain

Underground stations on metro systems are a dime a dozen, but ones located on mainline railways are far less common – with Holmestrand station in Norway being one of them, being located 70 meters beneath a mountain. Photo by Peter […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Underground archaeology at the metro station

During my visit to Vienna, I found something interesting when passing through the U-Bahn station of Stephansplatz – a window into an underground crypt. The Vergilius Chapel (German: Virgilkapelle) dated back to the early 13th century, with the Magdalene Chapel […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Modelling the railways of Hungary in N scale

Continuing my theme of modelling the railways of eastern Europe in 1:160 N scale model railways, this time I’m looking at the railways of Hungary and state operator MÁV (Magyar Államvasutak). Ready to run These models are ‘ready to run’ […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Modelling the railways of Romania in N scale

I’ve written about 1:160 N scale model railways here before, this time I’m going deeper down the rabbit hole of obscure prototypes and looking at the railways of Romania and state operator Căile Ferate Române. Ready to run These models […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Slow boat from Germany – delivering Adelaide’s trams

A long time ago I wrote about Adelaide’s Flexity trams and their Germany connection – well this is the story of how they got to Australia. The trams were built at the Bombardier factory in Bautzen, Germany. Government of South […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trams | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Modelling the railways of Russia in N scale

One of my hobbies is model railways, with 1:160 N scale being my chosen scale. Unfortunately the number of people who model the railways of Russia is difficult, let alone any N scale model of Russian trains, but there are […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Technical platform «Troitse-Lykovo» and tunnel station «Д»

The Moscow Metro has 250 stations across the network, as well two bizarre ones not included in that total – technical platform «Troitse-Lykovo» and tunnel station «Д». Just a carriage long and with bare concrete walls, they are a strange […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Enlarging the tunnels of the City and South London Railway

The narrow ‘tube’ tunnels of the London Underground are known for being claustrophobic, but there was one part of the network was being even more constrained – the City and South London Railway. This is the story of how the […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Riding the Children’s Railway in Budapest

Up in the hills above Budapest is a unique railway – the Gyermekvasút (Children’s Railway), where children aged 10 to 14 operate the railway under the supervision of adult staff. Opened in 1948, the 1.2 kilometres long 760 mm narrow […]

Continue reading

Posted in Trains | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

McFoxy – the McDonalds knockoff

On my visit to Kyiv I found an interesting local fast food chain – McFoxy. Best described as a McDonalds knockoff, they served burgers, chips and drinks. The real McDonald’s opened their first restaurant in Ukraine in 1997. With McFoxy’s […]

Continue reading

Posted in Everyday life | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment