After six years of planning and construction a new state-of-the-art cable car made its inaugural journey today on the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. The new cable car replaces the old Eibsee cable car* that has been taking up to half a million passengers a year up the...
Most travellers think of the French Ardennes, and the Meuse valley in particular, as a ‘battlefield’ landscape, but its longer heritage is ‘industrial’. This was the heart of the coal and iron industry in France and just as in the valleys of Wales, the story is one...
Zeroing in on central Wiltshire for a weekend escape to the country has opened my eyes to a time in history that, when I lived there, seemed to have passed me by. Staying in Marlborough, a town with the widest high street in the UK and a...
Designs for four new terrifying but beautiful structures for the Zhiangjiajie National Forest Park in China’s Human province, have been unveiled by their French designers, Martin Duplantier Architectes. The Chinese are fast developing a love-hate relationship with vertigo experiences in their cities and their landscapes, and the spectacular...
The massive 57-kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) in the Swiss Alps is finally opening this weekend after 17 years of construction. From Sunday 11 December, train passengers will be able to speed between northern & southern Switzerland in 17 minutes, cutting the overall cross-border journey time from...
The City of London Corporation’s planning and transport committee has just given the go-ahead for 1 Undershaft, a 73-storey/290-metre skyscraper in the City of London. It will be the second tallest building in Western Europe, after The Shard on the other side of the Thames. The Museum...
This is pretty impressive. It’s the world’s largest ship elevator built onto the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River at Yichang City, Hubei Province, central China. It opened earlier this month (18 Sep) and it enables small passenger & cargo ships up to 3,000 DWT(deadweight ton)...
If you are anywhere near the city of Chartres (SW of Paris) on 17 September, you should see the Festival of Lights (Fête de la Lumière) that night. It marks the climax of the 2016 season (16 Apr – 08 Oct) which sees many (27) of Chartres...
Ever wondered what a wind turbine looks like inside? And important questions like: How do you climb to the top? How much space is there up there? Why don’t the cables twist as it turns around? Here are the answers, and delivered in a really chirpy, no-nonsense...
The designers of the London Eye and Brighton i360 are involved in a spectacular new project for Chicago. The Chicago Skyline project – a new aerial cable car tourist attraction – was launched earlier this month by local businessmen, Lou Raizin and Laurence Geller, with plans from...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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